Current approaches to addressing the medical, financial and work-related problems of individuals in groups often fail to actually help them. Researchers and professionals focus on what they perceive as the average individual, which prevents them from recognizing those who (partly) fall outside their scope. These unseen people typically suffer from an intersecting complexity of social problems, ailments, or belonging to marginalized groups. There is a consistent lack of data about the needs of these intersectional groups. A case in point is period poverty. While this is an acknowledged problem in The Netherlands, there is no data on the extent of the problem (NOS 25/11/2020 https://nos.nl/artikel/2357978-schotland-maakt-als-eersteland-ter-wereld-menstruatieproducten-gratis.html). Our aim is to find ways to collect this type of data. We want to see the unseen and hear the unheard – people currently not included in abstract categories, datasets, or algorithms. This project will thus improve our understanding of the mismatch between the studied sample and the underlying population, and formulate suggestions to make data collection efforts more inclusive. We will do so by collaborating with professionals in the field to identify people who are not represented by the data used by researchers and governments to make decisions. We will listen to their stories and use these to inform us on how existing methods of medical, financial and work-related aid can be improved or replaced.
 

 Example of different, intersecting conditions, which  current research efforts fail to adequately cover. 
 
We concentrate on three major contexts: the hospital, the workplace and the neighbourhood. Here, we suspect, are many people who need help but are beyond the scope of those who provide it because their intersecting complexities go unnoticed. In a ten-month pilot, we will a) investigate the current methods of identifying the needs of unseen populations, and b) assess whether and to what extent these methods sufficiently reach the individuals within these populations. Specifically, we will 1) identify and learn from best practices in patient groups who have managed to make their voice heard by collaborating with scientists, 2) examine how and to what extent HR-managers listen to the voices of LGBTI+ employees (e.g., through LGBTI+ employee resource groups), a relatively invisible group in organizations, and 3) examine to what extent community projects in neighborhoods succeed in meeting the needs of low socioeconomic status individuals and in making sure these projects are inclusive. This project will create a close and sustained dialogue between disciplines, domains and fields. By means of monthly roundtable sessions for all team members, we facilitate cross-fertilization of our knowledge, experience and insights. Each session is structured according to the following steps, that are well-established in interdisciplinary studies: 1) disciplinary grounding, 2) perspective taking, 3) common ground, and 4) integration. The sessions will be moderated by Flatland Agency, a consultancy that employs design-thinking methodology and visual thinking to enable team members to arrive at the same page and devise a methodology for inter- and transdisciplinary co-creation that can be used by other researchers that are part of the alliance.
 
 

• prof. dr. Jojanneke van der Toorn
• dr. Lieke Stelling

• dr. Daniël Lakens
• dr. Daniël Tetteroo
• Dr. Mathias Funk
• Dr. Monique Simons
• Dr. Marianne Boes
• Manon Klarenaar MA

This project brings together an international and interdisciplinary network of scholars to examine the theme of free speech in various European societies in the period 1400-1750 from an interdisciplinary perspective.

• Prof. dr. Jelle Haemers (KU Leuven)
• prof. Jan Dumolyn (Ghent University)
• Dr Alasair Raffe (University of Edinburgh)

Although freedom of speech was not a civil right in the late Middle Ages, vocal criticism of power in the towns of the Low Countries was widespread. I will examine the mentality – the ‘characteristic ways of thinking, feeling, imagining and acting’ – behind this pervasive existence of subversive speech by analysing truth-tellers in narratives, characters who candidly express, at their peril, their truth to those in power. They will be tracked in the first printed books (1450-1500) in Dutch and will shed new light on the conceptualization and social acceptability of freedom of speech before the Modern age.