Magazine articles, August - December 2021

Enthusiastic convert preaches sustainable business

Reaching out to sustainable business owners is what Gjalt de Jong is all about. He sees the University as a director of innovation. An independent arbiter who can expedite the shift to a circular economy. To this end, he first needed to change himself; rediscover his core.
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The last notes of carilloneur Auke de Boer

Invisible yet unavoidable. That is Auke de Boer, carilloneur of the UG. On Tuesday, December 21, between 3 and 4 p.m., he will play the RUG carillon for the last time. The head chef within the Dutch carillon world tells us about his ‘pots of snert’ (pea soup).
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Cooperation: harder than it looks

Everyone and everything cooperates – educational institutions, companies, government institutions, NGOs, and of course individuals. But things often go wrong, even if all parties have the best intentions. Why is that? Rafael Wittek and Thomas Teekens are part of a large team of researchers exploring this rather uncharted territory. You could call it ‘cooperation studies’.
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Growing is so much more than height and weight

To give good advice at child health care centres and to make effective health policies children’s opportunities need to be taken into account. Not just their height and weight measurements, but also their socio-economic status including financial background, love and care of parents and harmful beliefs. Professor of Child Nutrition and Population Health Hinke Haisma broadened her horizon. She added social and cultural sciences to her life science background. She added new dimensions to ‘growing well’.
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How to deal with increasing polarization in the Netherlands?

Professor of Economics Sjoerd Beugelsdijk regularly asks himself how to deal with increasing polarization in the Netherlands. He is not very optimistic, given the ‘toxic cocktail’ of underlying causes. He wrote about this subject in his book De Verdeelde Nederlanden.
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Green hydrogen: indispensable and unifying

Partners researching the production of green hydrogen – Paolo Pescarmona is making key discoveries in a laboratory at the University of Groningen, while alumnus Jan-jaap Aué is leading a project at Hanze University of Applied Sciences to scale up this kind of knowledge into an industrially usable process. Northern knowledge institutions are collaborating on this project and others, within the University of the North.
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Home or away: what makes 'stayers' stay?

PhD student Jonne Thomassen has moved to a different town or city several times, as have many of her peers. Yet some people stay close to family or friends all their lives. Thomassen is researching why some people do not move away. Family ties are clearly an important motive for staying and, in some cases, can even serve as a deterrent to moving away.
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Lawyer and professor of personal injury? Arvin Kolder does it, and it brings him much satisfaction

As a lawyer, Arvin Kolder assists his clients in court regarding matters of personal injury. Once a week, however, he trades in his lawyer robes for those befitting a professor, so that he can hit the books with law students at the UG as Professor by special appointment of Personal Injury. Kolder loves his dual role: ‘I see myself doing this for many years.’
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Newspapers in former times: between reporting and propaganda

Newspapers first made their appearance in the Netherlands as early as 400 years ago. They mostly consisted of eyewitness accounts, which were as reliable or unreliable then as they are today. Historian Joop Koopmans talks about the news in early modern times and points to differences from and similarities with today’s news.
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Equality at the surgery

When you’re sitting opposite your GP, does it make a difference whether you’re a man or a woman? For some problems, it obviously does. But for other ailments, such as headaches, dizziness, or backache, gender should not, in principle, play a role. However, the procedure still appears to be different. Research conducted by Aranka Ballering has revealed that men are more likely to be given a physical examination and referred to a specialist than women.
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How do anorexia patients resist hunger?

Food. Our bodies cannot live without it and start to complain if they need it. How are individuals with anorexia able to repress this natural need so strongly? Psychologist Klaske Glashouwer is investigating this question. She suspects that they are repulsed by their own bodies.
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Researcher’s ideals inspire practical applications

Social psychologist Nina Hansen is a doer. She likes nothing better than to put theoretically driven research into practice with a view to making recommendations that can be implemented immediately. ‘I want to promote the link between research and practice,’ she says.
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Keep calm and carry on: the solar-powered car is on its way

Northern Netherlands team joins forces to prepare for race in Morocco

It takes a while to find at the Zernike Campus. The somewhat remote emergency building stands in sharp contrast to the hip title under which students of the UG, Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Noorderpoort, and Friese Poort are building their own solar-powered car: Top Dutch Solar Racing. But make no mistake – despite the shabby decor, this is a place of limitless ambition and perseverance.
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Blowing holes in economic ideologies

Earlier this year, political philosopher and associate professor of the UG, Lisa Herzog, was awarded the Ammodo Science Award, which she will be presented with on Tuesday. In concrete terms, this translates into a sum of €300,000 for the purposes of fundamental research.

Lisa Herzog embodies the saying that the economy is too important to be left to economists. As a philosopher, she has spent a considerable amount of time thinking critically about the current economic structures.
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The new healthcare: from eHealth to CoronaCheck

How do we keep healthcare affordable for everyone? Can an app ensure fewer hospitalizations? How do we know if the official CoronaMelder app helps to curb the spread of the virus? Behavioural scientist and epidemiologist Esther Metting aims to answer all of these questions.
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How changing his accent made 2Pac a credible West Coast rapper

13 September marks the 25th anniversary of rapper 2Pac’s death, following an assassination attempt. 2Pac went down in history as the Che Guevara of hip hop. 13 September is also the date on which Steven Gilbers will be awarded his doctorate. His research topic, namely the way in which the famous rapper adjusted his speech to forge a new identity for himself, was initially met with scepticism.
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