Grants and Awards FSS

The FSS Dissertation Award seeks to increase the high quality of empirical research in the broad field of social sciences. The granting of the FSS Dissertation Award is open to all FSS former PhD students that defended their dissertations in the past two years at the faculty.

Yudha Dewanto (SCA)
Indonesian Migrant Workers in Malaysia: Constructing Hybrid Transnational Communities

This dissertation interrogates the transnational lives of Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia by examining the multitudes of social fields that emerged between Malaysia and Indonesia. While migrant workers in Malaysia have been depicted as weak and precariat, migrant workers do not necessarily lose their agency. Building upon the literature on transnationalism, transnational social protection, and transnational advocacy networks, this project argues that migrant workers have formed hybrid transnational communities that play an important role in shaping migrant’s agency not only as an economic migrant but also what I call ‘acti-preneur’. These hybrid transnational communities merged various social fields such as advocacy, culture, and politics. Through their engagement in these communities, migrants have created a self-help support system that facilitates their process of settling in Malaysia amidst their temporary status. In reaching such an argumentation, this project was done through a series of ethnographic fieldwork in Malaysia and Indonesia between 2015 and 2020. The researcher has continuously engaged with both migrating and non-migrating actors in the two locations to capture the transnational contacts between them.

Yentl Dudink (ORG)
Moral Transitioning: Rivalling Storylines of Strategy-Identity Change in a Dutch Bank

Yentl explores the evolving role of Dutch banks in light of societal pressures and moral responsibilities that extend beyond their traditional function. Her qualitative study focuses on “North Bank” (pseudonym),  which is undergoing a phase of "moral transitioning," seeking to address past wrongdoings, align with sustainability goals, and combat financial crime. The dissertation aims to study how North Bank’s organizational members navigate and engage with challenges related to the strategy-identity change process of moral transitioning. The dissertation argues that North Bank's moral transitioning consists of acknowledging past wrongs and attempting to atone for them by shaping a positive future. The concept of "spatial work" is introduced to describe how managers reconcile conflicting viewpoints and guide the organization through a landscape of multiple potential paths. Overall, the dissertation underscores the importance of sincerity and authenticity in moral transitioning, and how these qualities influence the success of strategy-identity alignment in navigating societal and temporal expectations.

Moritz Laurer (CW)
Language Models as Measurement Tools: Using Instruction-Based Models to Increase Validity, Robustness and Data Efficiency

The dissertation addresses challenges in applying supervised machine learning to text classification, especially in social science research. Traditional methods, while effective, require large amounts of balanced training data, making them resource-intensive. They also struggle with multilingual data and can learn biased patterns, limiting their validity across diverse social groups. Additionally, these methods are often complex, making them accessible only to specialized researchers. To overcome these limitations, the thesis explores instruction-based language models. These models significantly reduce the need for extensive training data—by up to ten times compared to older algorithms—without sacrificing performance. They also show strong cross-lingual capabilities, requiring fewer than 2,000 examples in two languages to produce reliable measurements across eight additional languages and ten countries. The models demonstrate resilience to biases, with minimal drops in performance even when trained on biased datasets, as shown across nine groups from four datasets. Furthermore, they function as universal classifiers, capable of handling multiple classification tasks simultaneously, as tested on 33 datasets with 389 classes. Overall, the research highlights the potential of instruction-based models to make text classification more efficient, accessible, and accurate across languages and social contexts.

Joris Schröder (SOC)
Social Dynamics of Cooperation: How Motivational Diversity, Social Contagion, Communication, and Group Formation Shape Blood Donation Behaviour

Blood donations are in in high demand for many routine medical procedures and the development of life-saving drugs. This thesis studies the social dynamics that underlie blood donation behaviour, linking individual-centred blood donation literature with the experimental literature on social mechanisms that sustain cooperation. Studying blood donation in the Netherlands and Australia, it shows that a) donor motivations can be categorized into four types associated with blood donor background characteristics and long-term donor lapse, b) there is social contagion in blood donation, such that blood donors increase or decrease their donations in line with the donations made by other donors within their neighbourhood and especially their partners, c) talking about donations (not recruitment via word of mouth) predicts compliance with invitations to donate, and d) forming identity-based groups among donors is highly effective for increasing donation frequency. The thesis demonstrates the benefits of a focus on social-interactive mechanisms for understanding real-world cooperation and improving blood banking practice.

Sharon Stellaard (B&P)
Boemerangbeleid: Over aanhoudende tragiek in passend onderwijs- en jeugdzorgbeleid

Boemerangbeleid explores the persistent cycle of policy failures within inclusive education and youth care, investigating how every reform seems to react to the unintended consequences of the previous one, ultimately setting the stage for the next round of challenges. The book highlights how policies, much like a boomerang, repeatedly return, creating new issues just as they aim to solve the old. This work is grounded in institutional theory and calls for a long-term perspective on policy development, aiming to break the cycle of reactionary reform. Through four carefully constructed ‘historical narratives,’ the author derives insights and hypotheses about the evolution of these policies in the Netherlands, providing a comprehensive overview of reform attempts over the past forty years. With both a critical and engaging style, the book presents a fresh understanding of how well-intentioned policies can inadvertently set the conditions for future setbacks, perpetuating a cycle that remains difficult to break.


Previous years 

The FSS Research Award aims to bring the most appealing, promising and original research achievements into the spotlight. Each academic department of the FSS may nominate one candidate. This year the FSS Research Award will be granted to a junior research talent.


Philipp K. Masur (Communication Science) 

Philipp Masur is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the Managing Director of the Digital Media and Behavior Lab. Philipp’s research focuses on different aspects of digital communication and the impact of social media on our daily lives. It is characterized by interdisciplinary perspectives and a variety of methodological approaches, including survey, experimental, and computational methods. More specifically, he studies social influence and persuasion processes on social media, privacy and self-disclosure in networked publics, different types of media literacies, and social media use effects on individual well-being. In his current work, he investigates behavioral contagion and social norm processes on social media.

Eva van Roekel (Social and Cultural Anthropology) 

To survive, would you smuggle, extract gold, or mine cryptocurrencies, activities that exacerbate national food insecurity, energy shortages, corruption, and deforestation? In 2022, Eva van Roekel received an NWO-Veni grant to ethnographically study how Venezuelans face these ethical choices to survive within the persistent humanitarian crisis that confronts their country for more than a decade. This research forms part of Eva’s incipient anthropological work on changing ethics and violence in Latin America. In her work, she combines a critical anthropology with social philosophy and creative methods in pioneering ways. She also collaborates closely with Dutch and Latin American journalists and filmmakers to make her research accessible to a wider audience. She likes to say that writing fiction, filmmaking, and writing ethnographic theory has become her personal blend of doing anthropology since she started working at VU. These combined approaches clearly demonstrate her commitment to revitalizing social theory with ethnographic impact.

Joukje Swinkels (Sociology)

Dr. Joukje Swinkels is a distinguished researcher whose work addresses pressing societal challenges related to aging, caregiving, and welfare policy. Her research, particularly on the increasing demand for informal care amidst an aging population, provides valuable insights for policymakers and academia. She has made notable contributions to understanding gender differences in caregiver burden, demonstrated in her highly cited article in Journals of Gerontology, which employs advanced structural equation modeling to reveal the structural impact of gender on caregiver stress.

Dr. Swinkels' expertise in advanced statistical techniques and longitudinal analysis underscores her methodological rigor. She secured two ZonMw grants to study spousal caregiver burdens, focusing on gender differences and burden changes over time, reflecting her determination and resourcefulness. Beyond academia, her role in projects like Famcare and public engagement initiatives showcases her ability to bridge research with societal applications, significantly influencing both scientific discourse and practical caregiving strategies.

Kristina S. Weißmüller (Political Science and Public Administration) 

Kristina S. Weißmüller is a pioneering international expert in behavioral public administration and management, particularly in strategic decision making, leadership, motivation, and good governance. Her research centers around three fundamental issues in modern societies worldwide: public sector corruption, bureaucratic discretion, and the psychological effects of ‘publicness’ on governance under complexity and disruptive technological change. Her ambitious research agenda tackles society’s big problems (UN SDG16) because they concern citizens’ trust in public institutions and affect social cohesion. Kristina has secured funding for several (inter-)national research projects (e.g., on administrative (anti-)corruption and deliberative quality). Her strong commitment to the relevance of her research in service of society is demonstrated by her various international research collaborations and invited talks (e.g., with UNODC, WTO, ITC, Transparency International, GRIP), international policy and media comments, her service to the scholarly community, e.g. her appointments as Treasurer and Board Member of IRSPM and AYA. 

Marieke van Wieringen (Organization Sciences)

Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs) make up the largest occupational group in long-term care. Forecasts predict that their shortage will be the most significant among all healthcare professions, even though the care they provide is indispensable in our aging society. Despite their essential role, CNAs often experience undervaluation, invisibility, and marginalization. This paradoxical situation hinders their professional development and the formation of a shared professional identity, even though these are crucial for retaining and attracting members to the profession. Marieke aims to break this vicious cycle of scientific and societal invisibility. Her research examines how social and relational dynamics interact with the professional development and identity formation of CNAs and identifies what CNAs need to achieve both. She provides important theoretical insights into how low-status professional groups can overcome marginalization and invisibility. These insights inform recommendations and policymaking in government, sector association, and healthcare organizations to ensure the sustainability and effectiveness of CNAs in the workforce. 

Previous years 

The Johannes van der Zouwen Masterthesis Award is the prize for the best master's thesis in the field of social science research. The master thesis has to be graded with a minimum of 8 and has to be completed and graded a maximum of 1 year before the submission date. Each master programme of FSS may nominate a thesis. 
 

 
Previous years