Theme Groups

Theme Groups bring together scholars of different backgrounds with specific expertise to work together on a daily basis, to advance knowledge on a particular theme.

Each year, one to three research theme groups come to NIAS to carry out research that requires a longer period of daily cooperation. Theme groups are composed of maximum five scholars, and researchers work both individually and as a team on a clearly defined research topic.

Theme Groups

  1. Image made by Canva AI depicting a large, ancient tree representing evolving perspectives.

    Why do adults change their beliefs?

  2. Hybrid Agencies: Interacting with Biological and Artificial Systems

    Hybrid Agencies: Interacting with Biological and Artificial Systems

  3. Ecology and Belonging: In Search of a New Political Space

    Ecology and Belonging: In Search of a New Political Space

  4. Early Dutch Commerce and Indigenous Landscapes

    Early Dutch Commerce and Indigenous Landscapes

  5. Re-imagining Security Labour

    Re-imagining Security Labour

  6. Future of Progressive Politics 1

    Future of Progressive Politics

  7. The nexus of the built environment, organizational legitimacy, and social networks 2

    The Spatial Segregation of Neighborhood Organizations and Entrepreneurs: Connecting Urban Inequality to the Built Environment

  8. Climate Change and the Governance of Tropical Marine Conservation

    Climate Change and the Governance of Tropical Marine Conservation

  9. Political Theories of Involuntary Servitude within Europe (1600-1850)

    Political Theories of Involuntary Servitude within Europe (1600-1850)

  10. Social Media for Digital Democracy: Theory, Applications, Algorithms

    Social Media for Digital Democracy: Theory, Applications, Algorithms

  11. Gastro-politics of multi-cultural eating: Spices

    Refuge and Belonging

  12. Accessible Tool for Language Assessment in Schools (ATLAS) 1

    Accessible Tool for Language Assessment in Schools (ATLAS)

  13. The Politics of (De)familiarization: The Common and the Strange in Contemporary Europe

    The Politics of (De)familiarization: The Common and the Strange in Contemporary Europe

  14. New Theme Group Builds Research Agenda in Studies of War, Mass Violence & Genocide

    Building a Research Agenda in the Studies of War, Mass Violence and Genocide

  15. Accountability in Medical Autonomous Expert Systems: Ethical and Epistemological Challenges for Explainable AI

    Accountability in Medical Autonomous Expert Systems: Ethical and Epistemological Challenges for Explainable AI

  16. Vassily Kandinsky Composition 8

    Legal Mobilization: Analyzing Law-Based Advocacy

  17. Understanding Knowledge in the Low Countries, 1500-1900

    Understanding Knowledge in the Low Countries, 1500-1900

  18. What is Translation? Articulating the Missing Link between Psychiatry and Neuroscience 1

    What is Translation? Articulating the Missing Link between Psychiatry and Neuroscience

  19. Three British-Indian soldiers burn down houses in Bekasi (West-Java, 1945). Collection NIMH.

    Comparing the Wars of Decolonization

  20. Commodity Frontiers and the Making of Global Capitalism 4

    Commodity Frontiers and the Making of Global Capitalism

  21. Reading and Narrating the Migration/Refugee Crisis

    Reading and Narrating the Migration/Refugee Crisis

  22. Borders and the Transfer of Knowledge

    Borders and the Transfer of Knowledge

  23. Diaspora, Migration and the Sciences: A New Integrated Perspective

    Diaspora, Migration and the Sciences: A New Integrated Perspective

  24. The Comparative Biology of Language Learning: Towards the Next Level

    The Comparative Biology of Language Learning: Towards the Next Level

  25. The Evolution of Financial Markets in Pre-Industrial Europe: The Case of the Low Countries, 1500-1800

    Knowledge and the Market: Affective Economies

  26. My Optimism Wears Heavy Boots: So much research, so few implications, towards ‘patient-proof’ empirical models and more effective interventions in mental health

    My Optimism Wears Heavy Boots: So much research, so few implications, towards ‘patient-proof’ empirical models and more effective interventions in mental health

  27. Older adults' life strategies in preparing for the future

    From Multidisciplinary Perspectives to Interdisciplinary Pathways: An Agenda for Future Retirement Research and Policy

  28. My Optimism Wears Heavy Boots: So much research, so few implications, towards ‘patient-proof’ empirical models and more effective interventions in mental health 20

    Gene x Environment Interactions in the Developing Brain

  29. Knowledge and the City, ca. 1450 – ca. 1800

    Knowledge and the City, ca. 1450 – ca. 1800

  30. Mass Communication in Classical Antiquity

  31. The Evolution of Financial Markets in Pre-Industrial Europe: The Case of the Low Countries, 1500-1800

    The Evolution of Financial Markets in Pre-Industrial Europe: The Case of the Low Countries, 1500-1800

  32. The Real and the Imagined in the Contemporary Balkans

  33. My Optimism Wears Heavy Boots: So much research, so few implications, towards ‘patient-proof’ empirical models and more effective interventions in mental health 39

    European Elections and Public Cynicism

  34. Terrorscapes. Transnational Memory of Totalitarian Terror and Genocide in Postwar Europe

  35. Dutch Atlantic Connections: The Circulation of People, Goods and Ideas in the Atlantic world, 1600-1800

  36. Texture Analysis Challenge for The Arts

  37. My Optimism Wears Heavy Boots: So much research, so few implications, towards ‘patient-proof’ empirical models and more effective interventions in mental health 11

    The Construction of Local Identities through Language Practices

  38. The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge 3

    Modelling Social Reality: Emergence of the Glass Ceiling

  39. My Optimism Wears Heavy Boots: So much research, so few implications, towards ‘patient-proof’ empirical models and more effective interventions in mental health 7

    Understanding Information Spreading in Social Networks

  40. My Optimism Wears Heavy Boots: So much research, so few implications, towards ‘patient-proof’ empirical models and more effective interventions in mental health 39

    Explaining European Union Decision-Making: Insights from the Natural and the Social Sciences

  41. Lulof_HR

    Biographies of Buildings: Virtual Futures for our Cultural Past

  42. Grace-005_Cat Thrasher

    Social Support: Channels, Contexts, Health Consequences, and Technological Applications

  43. My Optimism Wears Heavy Boots: So much research, so few implications, towards ‘patient-proof’ empirical models and more effective interventions in mental health 19

    Capturing Phylogenetic Algorithms for Linguistics

  44. The Danger of Community Failure: Conditions for Solidary Behaviour in Modern Market Societies

  45. Network Analysis

  46. Rethinking the History of Medicine: 'Rationality' and 'Magic' in Babylonia and the Graeco-Roman World

  47. The East - West Encounter

  48. A Comparative History of the Literatures of East Central Europe

  49. East Asian and Latin American Developments Compared

  50. Flexibility and Strategy in Resource Allocation

  51. National Systems of Innovation and the Idea - Innovation Chain

  52. Tatian's Diatessaron

  53. Drawing family

    Historical Developmental Psychology

  54. Translation Techniques in Armenian and Syriac

    Translation Techniques in Armenian and Syriac

  55. An Encyclopaedia of Syntactic Case Studies

  56. Stratification in Eastern and Western Europe in the 1990s

  57. Pacific Asia and Europe: Developing Interfaces

  58. Bilingualism

  59. Political Parties and the Quality of Democracy

    Political Parties and the Quality of Democracy

  60. Human Syntactic Processing

  61. Magic and Religion in the Ancient Near East

  62. The History of Dutch Concepts

  63. Water texture

    Understanding Social Dilemmas

  64. Theatre Iconography

  65. Forensic Expertise and the Law of Evidence in Europe

  66. Inventing Europe. A Transnational History of European Integration

  67. Terrorists on Trial. The Court Room as a Stage in the Struggle for Publicity, Public Support and Legitimacy

  68. Flavius Josephus - Author, Editor or Historian?

  69. Coming to Terms with a Shattered World: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Violence in Africa

    Coming to Terms with a Shattered World: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Violence in Africa

  70. Games, Action and Social Software

    Games, Action and Social Software

  71. Restricted Linguistic Systems as Windows on Language Genesis

  72. Rulers, History and Exegesis in the Early Middle Ages: The Formation of Carolingian Political Identity

  73. The Grotian Concept of Rights

  74. A New View on Survey Research

    A New View on Survey Research

  75. Environmental History of Southeast Asia, 1500 - 2000

    Environmental History of Southeast Asia, 1500 - 2000

  76. Older adults' life strategies in preparing for the future

    Older adults' life strategies in preparing for the future

  77. The Reception of Netherlandish Art in the Indian Ocean Region and East Asia, and its Impact on Asian Cultures

  78. The Modern and Postmodern Augustine. Aspects of His Reception from 1600 to 2000

  79. Discourses of meditation and self-reflection in art and literature, 1300-1600

  80. HUGO - Hague Utilities for Global Organisations -