Member Profile for AISSR, Amsterdam

NWO-Vidi grants worth €800,000 for 13 UvA researchers
The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded Vidi grants worth €800,000 each to 13 experienced researchers from the UvA and the Amsterdam UMC, location AMC. The grants will enable them to develop their own innovative lines of research and set up research groups over the next five years.

The impact of COVID-19 on public support for the European Union
The Volkswagen Stiftung awards 1.5 million euro to project that studies how the COVID-19 pandemic affects Eurosceptic attitudes, solidarity with fellow Europeans and the electoral performance of Eurosceptic parties.

Maria Kaika Receives 2021 European Award for Excellence in Teaching
Prof. Dr. Maria Kaika of the University of Amsterdam wins the tenth annual European Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Social Sciences and Humanities. 'The breadth and depth of Maria Kaika’s work as a teacher, scholar and mentor are remarkable. They reveal what talent and passion can accomplish. Her achievements are stunning', stated the judging panel.

The CUS becomes a New European Bauhaus partner
The Centre for Urban Studies of the University of Amsterdam has been selected by the European Commission as an official partner of the New European Bauhaus initiative.

The Algorithmic Configurations of Sexuality
Algorithms have become significant shapers of the way sexuality is searched for and found on social media. In the online world, behavioral data speak for a person, instead of a person speaking for him/herself (Cheney-Lippold, 2017). This webinar examines how gendered content and sexual classifications on social media are algorithmically aggregated and processed to regulate the sexual “encounters” of users. Rebecca Saunders introduces the concept of sexual datafication in relation to digital pornographic culture, exploring how to conceptualize desire as data impact on dominant ideas of what sex should involve. Tianyang Zhou focuses on short videos featuring same-sex couples on Douyin/TikTok, arguing how a form of cruel optimism of gay visibility on being recognized in algorithmic systems emerges. Shuaishuai Wang examines HIV/AIDS-related content on the Chinese Q&A site Zhihu, shedding light on how recommendations by algorithms structure the media experience of gay men living with HIV.

New Podcast: Housing Matters
In the Housing Matters Podcast, Amber Howard, Junru Cui, Vera Vrijmoeth and Marieke van der Star sit down with researchers and practitioners from a range of fields and disciplines to discuss major 21st century housing issues.

Sharing Financial Intelligence Across Borders by FIUs
This webinar discusses how Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) coordinate their operations across distance and difference. FIUs play a pivotal role in financial surveillance. They receive transaction information from commercial actors, mediate this into intelligence, and disseminate it to other security actors. FIUs need to cooperate to follow money trails across borders. However, in practice, they are considerably different organizations adapted to their national environments. This webinar asks how FIUs negate their differences, coordinate their activities, and exchange financial intelligence across the globe. This webinar is the second webinar of the series Money as Security Data: Surveillance, Intelligence Evidence. The series explores ways in which ‘money’ has become security data in the practices of counter-terrorism financing. We show, discuss and critique the digital cultures of financial surveillance and ways in which mundane financial transactions are analyzed, identified, and shared. We discuss how mundane transaction data become understood as ‘intelligence’ that is shared internationally in the context of investigations. We explore how transaction data have the capacity to function as ‘evidence’ before a court of law.