news 2022

The Department of Social Sciences contributed to a large-scale replication study that aimed to understand the role of decisions scientists make during the research process. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study highlights the importance of Open Science and collaboration among scientists.

As a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, many scholars and scientists have left the country. More than 30 Ukrainian researchers displaced by the war have temporarily joined the University of Luxembourg mainly as research fellows and in some cases under temporary contracts funded by the FNR. In this series of interviews, we briefly present the researchers and their work.

Sports fitness apps, such as Strava, are gaining popularity year after year. They have also often become true social networks. You share very personal data there, and sometimes unknowingly also your home or work location as the starting point of your sports activities. The apps usually allow you to hide those locations, but researchers from the imec-DistriNet research group at KU Leuven discovered that in many cases that option gives a false sense of security.

Successful and unsuccessful approaches to the pandemic by Western governments Tuesday, May 17, 2022 — Since 2020, the world has been experiencing the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. The cause is obviously a virus, but the degree of its spread, and the associated number of infections and deaths, is largely dependent on socio-economic factors.

For many young people, conforming to gender norms seems a more attractive option than deviating from them, according to the thesis of Dr Laora Mastari, with which she obtained her doctorate at VUB. She conducted her research among Flemish children and young people aged between 10 and 25. Men and women are legally equal in Belgium, but there remains structural gender inequality.

VUB research shows that living close to wetlands increases risk of diseases such as malaria or pulmonary infections such as possible Tuberculosis Wednesday, January 12, 2022 — For her PhD at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the University of Sheffield, Dr. Marit Van Cant studied medieval to early modern skeletal populations from six archaeological sites in Flanders.