My name is Amarins Jansma, I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Social Psychology and affiliated with Adapt! At Adapt, we focus on understanding how individuals, groups, and institutions respond to various crisis situations, such as natural disasters, pandemics, and extremist attacks. Our goal is to strengthen trust and cooperation during times of crisis.

For my doctoral research, I studied the motivations and radical action strategies of the environmental and climate movement. Personally, I am very concerned about climate change, institutional racism, and social inequality. As I participated in protests, I noticed that more people shared these concerns. This sparked my curiosity about protesters' different motivations for taking action and what kind of actions they think are (or will be) needed. To study this, I wrote a research proposal for a interdisciplinary PhD project (2020 - 2024) under supervision of prof. Kees van den Bos and prof. Beatrice de Graaf.

Motivation

In the video below, I explain (in Dutch) more about my research interest and why I think it is important to contribute to a just world:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbAMHmQd9Ec

Questions that concern me include: Why does one concerned citizen stay home while the other is on the barricade? What makes some protesters employ strategies of civil disobedience while other groups do not (or cannot) use these tactics? How do individuals and groups legitimize lawbreaking, define violence, and when do they become sympathetic to such tactics? How is it that "left-wing" action groups (relative to right-wing and religious groups) remain nonviolent while often facing police conflict during protests? And what role do past memories and future expectations play in contemporary activism?

Research

Ethical research practices are of paramount importance to me. Following Open Science principles, I use pre-registration, publish open access, and aim to communicate my research insights both within and outside the academic domain in an open and transparent manner. Safeguarding my role as an independent researcher is very important to me, as is constantly reflecting on the influence of my own position, perspectives and background in my research. I believe that high-quality interdisciplinary scientific research can contribute to a better understanding of the social discontent of both protest groups that radicalize towards law-breaking or violent behavior, but also movements and individuals who do not radicalize and, in fact, function peacefully within the democratic rule of law.