De manhaftige Arria in wetenschappelijk perspectief

What we know about women in ancient Rome depends on the available sources, but also on the questions we ask. In this article, the role of women in Latin literature is discussed in relation to the academic interest for these characters and the changes in these interests. Whereas a first generation of studies of Roman women was mostly focused on (stereo)types in literature, the second generation used material and textual sources to contextualize the lives of actual women in specific places and at specific times, and the third generation is influenced by gender theories and questions what femininity and masculinity mean in a specific socio-cultural environment. The case of Arria as described by Martial and Pliny serves to illustrate the different approaches to women in antiquity

De manhaftige Arria in wetenschappelijk perspectief

What we know about women in ancient Rome depends on the available sources, but also on the questions we ask. In this article, the role of women in Latin literature is discussed in relation to the academic interest for these characters and the changes in these interests. Whereas a first generation of studies of Roman women was mostly focused on (stereo)types in literature, the second generation used material and textual sources to contextualize the lives of actual women in specific places and at specific times, and the third generation is influenced by gender theories and questions what femininity and masculinity mean in a specific socio-cultural environment. The case of Arria as described by Martial and Pliny serves to illustrate the different approaches to women in antiquity

Introduction to Travelling Islam

At the core of this special issue, Travelling Islam: The Circulation of Ideas in Africa, lies the editors’ fascination with the circulation of ideas by means of African languages, texts and people in and from Islamic Africa. It draws inspiration from a previous work on “Travelling Texts Beyond the West,” co-edited by Clarissa Vierke and Annachiara Raia. Further input has been provided by a workshop organised in 2020 with the generous support of lucis (Leiden University Centre of Islam in Society) and in cooperation with colleagues from the African Studies Centre Leiden, its collaborative research group ‘Africa in the World: Rethinking Africa’s Global Connections,’ and the neh Ajami Project

The human cost of development:Situating development-induced displacement in international human rights law

Development-induced displacement (DID)—a phenomenon where people are involuntarily moved from their homes or residences to make room for development projects—is one of the prominent causes of internal displacement affecting millions of people every year. DID can be caused by a range of small and large-scale development projects, such as the construction of dams, urban (re)development projects, and extraction of natural resources. While these development projects have significant economic potential, the involuntary displacement they often cause comes with a plethora of risks and consequences including, inter alia, loss of land, a decrease of income sources, lack of access to public services, and disruption of culture and way of life. These adverse consequences further interfere with and potentially violate a range of human rights, such as the right to housing, the right to property, the right to work, and the right to education. Moreover, DID and its adverse consequences often hit the hardest vulnerable and marginalized groups potentially perpetuating existing vulnerabilities and inequalities. Against this background, the current study seeks to situate DID and its adverse consequences in international human rights law. Using the human rights-based approach as a theoretical framework, it seeks to (re)frame the adverse consequences of DID as human rights issues and explore rights-based solutions to address these issues. The study will identify the pertinent human rights norms and assess their application in the context of DID. In doing so, it seeks to explore the human rights safeguards that need to be provided for people(s) affected by DID and the corresponding obligations of states. Overall, the objectives of this research are twofold, i.e. map out the existing international human rights law norms that apply to DID and assess the adequacy of these norms in addressing the adverse consequences and the salient features of DID

Companies and the energy transition: A business model perspective

The following sections are included:- Introduction- What is a Business Model? An Overview of Different Interpretations- Toward More Dynamic and Comprehensive Interpretations: Business Model Innovation for Sustainability- Viewing the Energy Transition from a Business Model Perspective- Concluding Remarks- Reference

Navigating a complex landscape:Parental political socialization in the Netherlands

Adolescence is a crucial life-phase for political learning. During this formative period, adolescents develop and stabilize their political preferences through the process of political socialization. This dissertation proposes that political socialization processes are influenced by the structure of the party system in which adolescents grow up. While two-party systems provide a relatively stable electoral context, multiparty systems present adolescents with a more fragmented and volatile political landscape, creating unique challenges for political learning. Drawing on original survey data from the Netherlands, I examine how adolescents form their party preferences amid such challenges, with a specific focus on the role of parents as socializing agents and the dynamics of intergenerational transmission in multiparty contexts. I explore various aspects of parental political socialization and intergenerational transmission in multiparty systems, such as the importance of the left-right spectrum for the socialization of party preferences, bidirectional socialization, moderators of transmission, and generational differences in ideological perceptions. My findings underscore the need for more integrative approaches to studying political socialization, emphasizing the importance of considering a broader range of political orientations and the role of children as agents in political socialization processes

Improving the robustness and effectiveness of neural retrievers in noisy and low-resource settings

Modern search engines need to be able to deal with user queries that are common, unpopular or have never been seen before, as well as queries that are error-free or contain errors. Furthermore, they must adapt to new domains and operate effectively in resource-constrained environments to ensure accessibility and scalability. To fulfill the user's expectations and address the increasing complexity of their queries, modern search engines need to (i) provide access to unstructured knowledge sources, as well as structured knowledge sources, (ii) further provide question-answering functionalities to enhance the search engine result page with direct answers to the given queries, and finally (iii) support multiple means via which the users can express their queries e.g., text, voice, and image. In this thesis, we focus on developing robust neural retrievers to support various functionalities of modern search engines. In particular, we investigate how to improve the robustness and effectiveness of neural retrievers in noisy and low-resource settings. We first explore the impact that errors in a query have on the retrieval performance of neural retrievers for ad-hoc retrieval and propose ways to robustify them. Then, we explore the use of neural methods for multi-modal retrieval over spoken queries and textual documents. Next, we examine the challenges of training an effective neural retriever with limited computational resources to tackle complex user queries requiring multi-hop retrieval. Lastly, we investigate how neural retrieval can be used to increase relation prediction performance in knowledge graph question-answering over previously unseen domains

<i>Amae</i>, <i>Saudade</i>, and <i>Schadenfreude</i>

In this chapter, we focus on three emotion terms that are hard to translate to English and that have often been discussed as examples of culturally specific emotions: amae, a Japanese concept related to the experience of mutual dependence in relationships; saudade, an emotion concept present in Portuguese-speaking contexts related to longing and nostalgia; and Schadenfreude, a German emotion concept that describes a feeling of pleasure at another person's misfortune. For each emotion, we examine its linguistic roots, explore its components, and discuss its function in the respective cultural context. We argue that each of these emotion terms refers to a category of experiences that fulfil a salient function in the respective cultural context; these meanings are not readily or fully available for English speakers without immersing themselves in the socio-cultural context in which the emotion terms are commonly used

Dielectric properties of interfacial water and distribution of ions at the air/water interface

This thesis covers several topics, including (i) the vibrational coupling of the H-O-H bending mode of bulk water, (ii) including the dielectric properties of interfacial water on sub-nanometer length scales, and the influence of interfacial dielectric on the surface water spectrum, and (iii) the distribution of ions at the air/water interface. Here, we employ the heterodyne-detected vibrational sum-frequency generation (HD-SFG) spectroscopy and polarization-resolved pump-probe IR measurement for studying the surface and bulk water, respectively. For bulk water, compared to O-H stretch vibration, information on energy transfer pathways from the H-O-H bending mode is lacking. Here, we reveal that the bend-to-bend coupling is much weaker than the stretch-to-stretch coupling. We find that the intramolecular bend-to-libration energy transfer (≈ 200 fs) takes place much faster than the intermolecular bend-to-bend coupling (≈ 1 ps). For water surface, HD-VSFG allows one to study the microscopic structure and dielectric environment of the interface. This so-called Fresnel factor correction can change the line shapes and absolute amplitudes of SFG spectra substantially. By comparing the experimental and simulated SFG spectra, we resolve the interfacial dielectric function with the angstrom-level depth resolution. Furthermore, we find that the impact of the vibrational coupling of water surface is largely suppressed due to the Fresnel factor. Next, we investigate the microscopic structure of electric double layer (EDL) created by the differential distribution of anions and cations at the interface. We find that small ions will not deplete from water surface but located in a subsurface region leading to a surface stratification