On Wednesday 17 January 2024, Lies Appels (Department of Training and Educational Sciences) cordially invites you to the public defence of her doctoral thesis

The face of education. The quest for educational quality and equity through international large-scale assessments. 

In today’s educational landscape, the concepts of quality and equity have emerged as central figures in the global discourse on education. They are akin to education’s very essence, or its face in a metaphorical sense. To grasp this essence, researchers have turned their gaze to international large-scale assessments (ILSAs), treasure troves of insights into diverse educational systems worldwide. These assessments enable researchers to unveil their system’s educational face, set side by side with others, sparking extensive research efforts that inform educational reforms in pursuit of progress.

Within this dissertation, we address the possibilities and uncertainties surrounding this portrayal of education’s face, one that embodies quality and equity, using ILSA data. The reasons for this are grounded in an often implicit reliance on a common-sense view of what quality and equity should entail. The research journey unfolds in five interconnected studies, each contributing to a deeper understanding of these concepts within the ILSA context. Our endeavor commences by unravelling the complexities surrounding quality and equity in secondary analyses of ILSA data, casting light on their diverse interpretations and operationalizations. This research objective guided the paths of Studies 1 and 2. These systematic reviews unearth the linguistic interpretations and measurement traditions of quality (Study 1) and equity (Study 2). They reveal the shortcomings of conventional approaches, which tend to oversimplify these multifaceted notions by reducing them to single-value metrics, mainly revolving around academic achievement. This reductionist perspective fails to capture the richness inherent in both quality and equity. Moving beyond this initial exploration, Studies 3 and 4 embark on an expedition into potential avenues for investigating the multidimensional nature of these concepts. Employing cluster analyses to examine quality (Study 3) and equity (Study 4) configurations, these studies unveil the potential of ILSA data to investigate these concepts with a level of nuance that was previously often lacking. In our final chapter, Study 5, we unify the threads of the preceding studies, transcending the conventional quality-versus-equity dichotomy and uncovering the concealed relationships among various dimensions within these concepts.

In summation, this dissertation embarks on a journey through the delicate landscapes of educational quality and equity, revealing their multifaceted nature. It underscores the symbiotic relationship between quality and equity, and emphasizes the need for nuanced approaches. In essence, the dissertation aspires to provide a vivid portrait of education—a face that invites scrutiny, inquiry, and learning. It serves as a foundational step, guiding future research, policy development, and educational practices in the ever-evolving domain of education. 

Practical information

• Promovendus: Lies Appels 
• Promotor: Prof. dr. Peter Van Petegem & prof. dr. Sven De Mayer    
• Date: Wednesday 17 January 2024, 5 PM
• Location:  Stadscampus, Prentenkabinet (Hof van Liere, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerp) 

On Friday 19 January 2024, Yu-Chin Her (Department of Sociology) cordially invites you to the public defence of her doctoral thesis

Like brother, like sister? 

Disentangling the intertwined associations between siblings' life course trajectories.

Sibling relationships have been a subject of great interest in research due to their unique and long-lasting nature. Scholars have recognized the significance of sibling ties in providing social support, emotional connection, and shared experiences throughout different life stages. Understanding the dynamics of sibling relationships is important to uncover their potential influence on various aspects of individuals’ lives, including their attitudes, behaviors, and life course trajectories. While previous research has primarily focused on the transfer of experiences and behaviors from parents to their children, this dissertation delves into the reciprocal interactions among siblings. It seeks to unravel whether individuals resemble their siblings in their life course trajectories due to direct sibling effects (“like brother, like sister”), while attempting to account for the fact that their similarities may stem from shared upbringing and environments from their parents (“like parents”).

First, this thesis investigates the extent to which siblings’ behaviors are connected in terms of different life course trajectories (i.e., leaving the parental home, fertility, and partnership dissolution).

Second, it utilizes siblings’ demographic similarities to understand the circumstances in which sibling (dis)similarities are amplified. Similar to this, the dissertation addresses two under-examined sibling characteristics (i.e., personality traits and relationship closeness) that may play a role in strengthening the associations between siblings’ life courses. This allows us to add new insights into the existing literature. Overall, this dissertation offers a deeper understanding of how sibling ties and family dynamics shape individual development and life course trajectories.

Practical information

• Promovendus: Yu-Chin Her 
• Promotor: Prof. dr. Dimitri Mortelmans & dr. Jorik Vergauwen    
• Date: Friday 19 January 2024, 1 PM
• Location:  Stadscampus, Hof van Liere, F. de Tassiszaal & A. Dürerzaal (Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerp) 

On Friday 2 February 2024, Hanne Apers (Department of Sociology) cordially invites you to the public defence of her doctoral thesis

Explanatory models of mental health:

a qualitative study among East-African migrants and Belgian healthcare professionals. 

Research indicates a significant prevalence of mental health issues among migrants in Europe, because they are confronted with various risk factors throughout their migration journey.

Despite these mental health challenges, migrants are underserved in mental healthcare services in the countries of destination due to, amongst other factors, their different understanding of mental health with the dominant healthcare system.

Recognizing the influence of cultural differences on mental health perceptions is essential to enhance mental healthcare for migrants since it leads to variations in causal attributions, health-seeking behaviour, and treatment practices.

Therefore, this dissertation seeks to explore the understanding of mental health among East-African migrants in Belgium, employing the anthropological concept of ‘explanatory models’. Additionally, it examines how healthcare professionals perceive these explanatory models, including potential differences compared to their own views, as well as the impact of these perceptions on the professionals’ healthcare practices.

The study is based on in-depth interviews conducted with first-generation East-African migrants and healthcare professionals working with African communities.

Practical information

• Promovendus: Hanne Apers
• Promotors: Prof. Dr. Sarah Van De Velde, UAntwerpen; Prof. Dr. Lore Van Praag, Erasmus University Rotterdam; Prof. Dr. Christiana Nöstlinger, Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp
• Date: Friday 2 February 2024, 10 AM
• Location:  Stadscampus, de Meerminne, aula S.M.002 (St-Jacobsstraat 2, 2000 Antwerp) 

On Friday 23 February 2024, Paulien Decorte (Department of Communication Studies) cordially invites you to the public defence of her doctoral thesis

How the Cookie Crumbles: a Multi-Method Investigation of Food and Recipe Media Content Use in Relation to Gratifications, Processing and Effects among Emerging Adults

Food has come to play a central role in people’s daily media use patterns, as food media content has become pervasive across various media. There is also a growing integration between people’s food and media habits, which exemplifies the intricate relationship between food and media. In other words, understanding food media content use is central to a broader understanding of both daily media and food behaviors. Emerging adults aged 18-25 form a significant demographic group in the food and media domains. They find themselves in a unique developmental stage and generation marked by extensive media use and evolving food preferences that can shape their long-term consumer choices and health outcomes. Their extensive media use consistently exposes them to ubiquitous food media content, which can impact their immediate and future consumer decisions and health behaviors. While various research disciplines have explored food media content use, a specific and systematic focus is lacking on how emerging adults interact with food media content in their daily lives as it ranges from active to passive use and is present across various media. Recipe media content is another promising area of study among emerging adults as well, as a key food information source from various senders influencing their food-related decisions. Here, there remains a need to more closely investigate the social dynamics of recipe media content, understanding how emerging adults perceive and prefer content from various sources. Furthermore, an investigation the persuasive mechanisms in this content affecting their emotional and cognitive processing and food-related decisions has not yet been conducted. A bottom-up approach is necessary that aims to investigate food and recipe media content use in a way that is closer to emerging adults’ daily routines and investigates the complex social dynamics and processing of this content. It can better inform media and content creation strategies, health promotion, marketing, and this age group’s food decision-making. To tackle these current gaps, this dissertation develops an integrated model applied to food media content use, processing, and effects based on an existing integrative model for general media use. Five empirical chapters address different parts of this integrated model and aim to better understand emerging adults’ food and recipe media content use, processing, and effects. The chapters employ a sequential, multi-method approach. The different studies therefore converge to collectively and holistically inform an understanding of the various factors at play in how emerging adults use, process, and are affected by food and recipe media content. These different chapters shed a multi-faceted light on the complex process of emerging adults’ food and recipe media content use, processing, and effects. They contribute to a conceptual, theoretical, and empirical understanding of this phenomenon while combining different methodological approaches. Limitations and intriguing paths for future work are acknowledged and discussed. Finally, implications and recommendations are formulated that can benefit both marketers and health promotors in creating preferred and influential food media content for emerging adults. 

Practical information

• Promovendus: Paulien Decorte
• Promotors: Prof. Dr. Charlotte De Backer, prof. dr. Karolien Poels & prof. dr. Tim Smits
• Date: Friday 23 February 2024, 5 PM
• Location:  Stadscampus, Promotiezaal van de Grauwzusters (Lange St-Annastraat 7, 2000 Antwerp) 

The defence is followed by a reception; please confirm your attendance before 15/02/2024 via the online registration form.  

 On Friday  8 March 2024, Sofie Mariën (Department of Communication Studies) cordially invites you to the public defence of her doctoral thesis

A narrative perspective on peer-to-peer support websites for young people: effects of writing and reading personal narratives

Peer-to-peer support websites (such as ‘Awel.be’), which young people can use to interact in an anonymous manner with peers about distressing events, have predominantly been studied from the perspective of the exchange of social support responses between users. From a narrative perspective, this dissertation proposes that writing and reading personal narratives on peer-to-peer support websites may affect young people’s emotional well-being and coping self-efficacy in relation to a stressful event regardless of the social support that users give or receive. We started from expressive writing theory and narrative persuasion theory to study how writing one’s own personal narrative and reading personal narratives of others on peer-to-peer support websites may help young people to feel better about and feel more confident in coping with a distressing event. Young people’s personal narratives (aged between 14 and 25 years old) about their experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic were analysed for this purpose.

From a narrative perspective, we conclude that the way young people write about their personal experiences and the content of personal narratives they read of others on peer-to-peer support can affect young people’s emotional coping self-efficacy and well-being, independent of the social support responses that are exchanged between users. We conclude that writing instructions and interface adaptations may help young people to reflect and write more effectively on distressing experiences on peer-to-peer support websites. Especially writing instructions and interface adaptations that help young writers to focus more on the positive sides of their experiences – alongside writing about emotions and thoughts related to distressing experiences – may help them to reappraise negative experiences for the better. Young readers may in turn benefit from reading more positively framed narratives as well, especially if the described events align with their own experiences. 

The findings of this dissertation lead to theoretical and practical implications that are of use to designers of peer-to-peer support websites and improve online mental health support services for young people.

Practical information

• Promovendus: Sofie Mariën
• Promotors: Prof. Dr. Heidi Vandebosch & prof. dr. Karolien Poels
• Date: Friday 8 March 2024, 4:30 PM
• Location:  Stadscampus, Willem Elsschotzaal (Hof van Liere, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerp) 

The defence is followed by a reception; please confirm your attendance by mail before 28/02/2024 at sofie.marien@uantwerpen.be.  

 On Friday  15 March 2024, Zeger Verleye (Department of Political Science) cordially invites you to the public defence of his doctoral thesis

Empire in Disgrace: (Post-)Imperial Belgium and the Politics of Shame

This PhD thesis aims to gain insight into how the politics of shame manifest itself on the state level. A wide range of observers note the presence of shame in contemporary world politics but International Relations (IR) literature has generally refrained from theorizing on this emotion. However, recent contributions that surround the notion of ontological security have engaged with the term ‘state shame’. The current dissertation presents several critiques on how this concept has been conceived in this literature and argues for a more grounded notion based on works in feminist studies, the sociology of emotions, and political theory. Rather than an ‘inability to narrate the state’s sense of Self’, state shame is conceived in this dissertation as a narrative on the negative assessment of the state. This understanding informs a comprehensive typology that can intelligibly capture the elaborate and diverse politics of shame on the state level. The novel conceptualisation of state shame-as-a-narrative is grounded in a historical case study of Belgium and its (post-)imperial past. Three specific moments in this history are studied using both structural narrative analysis and interpretative sentiment analysis of parliamentary records, namely the Red Rubber scandal (1903-1908), Congolese independence (1959-1960), and the Lumumba Commission (1999-2002). The novel conception of state shame was able to bring insight into the particular dynamics of these episodes and make original contributions to the historiography of the Belgian empire. In effect, the dissertation concludes that state shame-as-a-narrative has analytical potential for both the discipline of IR and beyond. 

Practical information

• Promovendus: Zeger Verleye
• Promotors: Prof. Dr. Jorg Kustermans
• Date: Friday 15 March 2024, 4 PM
• Location:  Stadscampus, F. de Tassiszaal (Hof van Liere, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerp) 

The defence is followed by a reception; please confirm your attendance by mail before 11/03/2024 at zeger.verleye@uantwerpen.be. 

On Friday  29 March 2024, Anne-Catherine Guio (Department of Sociology/Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research) cordially invites you to the public defence of her doctoral thesis

Better measuring, understanding and addressing the different facets of material and social deprivation in the EU

Material and social deprivation indicators are widely used as alternative or complementary measures of poverty. Instead of concentrating on income, they look at the inability to afford a set of specific goods, services or social activities that are considered essential for a decent quality of life by most people in the country concerned.

This dissertation focuses on the measurement of material and social deprivation across the EU multinational context. It discusses various methodological questions related to the comparability and reliability of deprivation indicators between countries and the best ways of addressing them. In particular, the description of the analytical framework that was developed to identify the set of robust items included in the EU material and social deprivation indicators, which are now used for monitoring Member States’ progress towards the EU social objectives.In addition, as both the needs and living standards of children can be different from those of adults, even within a same household, the dissertation also discusses the construction of a child-specific indicator (as opposed to a whole-population indicator).

The dissertation then deepens our understanding of deprivation and explores what it concretely means to be deprived in the different EU countries. It identifies a deprivation order, i.e. the items which people have to successively go without when their deprivation level increases, and it shows that, despite large differences in living standards between Member States, this deprivation order is similar across the EU.

The dissertation also investigates the degree of within-couple inequalities in individual deprivation, using six items collected at individual (for each adult) rather than household level. It shows that, where a difference between partners in a couple appears, the intra-couple gender deprivation gap may be to the detriment of either partner, but is more frequently to the detriment of the woman. The econometric analysis shows that the work status of the partners and the relative share of their individual income in the total household income are important determinants of the intra-couple gender deprivation gap.

Finally, the dissertation analyses the extent to which personal characteristics and public drivers affect deprivation levels in EU countries, and how deprivation can be combated effectively via adequate public policies. It extensively demonstrates the importance of taking into account the provision of social transfers and public services when analysing differences in deprivation between countries.

Practical information

• Promovendus: Anne-Catherine Guio
• Promotors: Prof. Dr. Ive Marx
• Date: Friday 29 March 2024, 10:30 AM
• Location:  Stadscampus, promotiezaal Klooster van de Grauwzusters (Lange St-Annastraat 7, 2000 Antwerp) 

The defence is followed by a reception; please confirm your attendance by mail before 15/03/2024 at anne-catherine.guio@liser.lu.