Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "The crucial role of lecturers in dealing with diversity in higher education. A study on lecturers’ diversity ideologies and practices, their impact on students and the development of an intervention trajectory." "Jozefien De Leersnyder" "Social and Cultural Psychology" "Compared to other regions, the Flemish educational system scores highly on quality, yet poorly on equality: significant achievement gaps between youth with and without a migration background and those with low versus high socio-economic status (SES) persist in secondary and tertiary education (European Center for Statistics, 2014; PISA, 2015; 2018). These inequalities in turn reduce the future career opportunities and living standards of already vulnerable youth with a migration and/or low socio-economic background. Previous research has shown that these achievement gaps cannot be explained away by individual or family factors (such as IQ, parental education or home language) (Agirdag & Korkmazer, 2015), and that the approach to diversity at school is a crucial but underexposed factor. Specifically, it has been shown that an intercultural/pluralistic approach that recognizes and values socio-cultural differences reduces achievement, while the reverse is true for color-blind approaches that ignore socio-cultural differences and emphasize individuality (Celeste et al., 2019; De Leersnyder et al., 2020). In many European higher education institutions meritocracy, equal treatment and uniqueness are core values. A color-blind approach is most tempting and, therefore, often dominant. Students with a migration background and/or low socio-economic status are still confronted with misunderstanding or unconscious behavior (micro-aggressions, white middle-class blindness, language prejudice etc.) (De Vroey et al., 2016; Jansen et al., 2017).Concretely, minority students in higher education experience up to 4 times as much discrimination as their peers in the majority group, feel less at home at the college or university and suffer from higher drop out rates and slower study progress (e.g. Diversity Monitor UvA, 2016; O’Keeffe, 2013). A student’s ability to develop a sense of belonging within the higher education institution requires a caring, supportive and welcoming and a safe environment. This can be achieved not only through the development of positive student/faculty relationships and the presence of a well-equipped counseling center, but also by a pluralistic study environment that embraces diversity and difference and does not see diversity as a deficit, but as an actual resource and asset to thrive in higher education. Part of the pathway towards more inclusive higher education institutions is the employment of staff with a diverse background, because they can act as role-models for the students and that having a lecturer with the same migration and/orsocio-cultural background is linked to better study results (Llamas, Nguyen & Tran, 2019). However, creating an inclusive diversity climate is not solely the task of staff with a migration an/or lower socio-economic background. An equitable and inclusive learning environment in which diversity can be activated as capital and an environment that embraces cultural differences related to ethnicity and/or social class also relies on the diversity qualities and skills of staff belonging to the majority group. This PhD thesis focuses on the socio-cultural sensitivity of higher education staff and their awareness of implicit assumptions and/or Western frameworks translated into their curriculum and didactics. It also examines the impact of lecturers' diversity ideologies and practices on their students' sense of belonging and study results, and sets out first steps towards interventions that can promote a pluralistic climate in higher education." "Geographic information systems (GIS) for the benefit of public health - development and implementation of automated time-space models" "Philippe De Maeyer" "Department of Geography" "The rise of the automobile in the post-World War era has brought the concepts of transportation and mobility for personal use to the foreground. What started as a luxury good for the more well-off, swiftly evolved to a common good for the masses due to the combination of an ever-growing demand and vast improvements in the industrial production chain. The increased use of private motorized vehicles has strongly altered the built environment in Flanders as well as its inhabitantsU+2019 travel behavior, and, as such, the general living standards. However, this has also led to an increasing societal strain of the various externalities related to travel by car, enhanced by the diminishing popularity of public transportation systems as an adequate alternative for daily travel. An important, often understudied aspect is transportU+2019s ability to construct an unequitable distribution of the benefits generated by the (combination of) transport systems. Herein, concepts of transport poverty and social exclusion in the domains of transportation and spatial planning are often neglected in academic research, as the majority of accessibility-focused studies start from an overly simplified situation that only accounts for spatial constraints. In order to grasp the complexity of the matter at hand, research needs to additionally address the temporal and personal constraints that impact a personU+2019s accessibility. The proposed dissertation provides a structural framework that supports the claim for more detailed, person-based accessibility measures, and illustrates five case studies within this theoretic framework. The first chapterserves as a general background and introduces the reader to the concepts of mobility and accessibility. The author aims to highlight how the concept of accessibility is better suited to address demand-driven transportation models, as it goes beyond merely providing mobility to the transport system users. The past two decades, there has been a growing focus on the social implications of transport planning in addition to the wellstudied economic and environmental outcomes. In both scientific research and policy support, aspects of mobility and accessibility U+2013 or even transportation in general U+2013 are, however, often considered from a purely spatial point of view. This leads to an incorrect representation of the actual situation, as temporal as well as personal restrictions strongly impact an individualU+2019s level of accessibility. Resultantly, transport policies are considered to possibly generate inequitable accessibility effects that favor certain population groups zbove others. Various conditions of transport disadvantage remain under the radar, which hinders an equitable distribution of transport benefits and exacerbates situations of social exclusion. Herein, the aspect of fairness of the transport system and its users is highly complex and strongly dependent on the way justice is defined. The applied case studies indicate that each research question is dependent on different input datasets and required outcomes. Therefore, this dissertation proposes a framework that highlights the importance of incorporating spatial, temporal and individual constraints into accessibility analysis to better understand issues of transport disadvantage. The hypothesis is that person-based space-time accessibility measures are more suitable for equity appraisal than place-based measures and allow researchers or policy makers to address policy issues that cannot be addressed by using purely spatial accessibility measures. Although primarily applied for spatial analysis, given the right datasets, geographic information systems (GIS) can support accessibility measures for all three dimensions: in addition to space, also time and the individual. The second chapter provides a preliminary case study example of the extent to which accessibility measures that introduce mobility patterns into the analysis differ from commonly applied, purely spatial accessibility measures.An adaptation of the well-known two-step floating catchment area measure assessed accessibility to childcare services based on the commute from the home to the work location instead of the static night-time representations of the population. The results showed significant differences in accessibility levels and pinpoint the importance of giving heed to temporal variations in supply and demand as well as more complex travel behaviorin general. The third chapter complements this idea, and focused on the temporal variability of the public transport system and this systemU+2019s ability to bring individualU+2019s to a desired location. Herein, public transport gaps were identified as areas where the transit provision does not match the need. The chapter illustrated that high public transport gaps mainly affect suburban areas and that these gaps are dependent on the time people are willing or mandated to travel. In addition, it showed that although transit provision varies over space, the actual need for transportation is strongly influenced by individualsU+2019 characteristics. Whereas this chapter examined the accessibility to a wide range of opportunities using one transport system, it didnot consider multimodal differences in access to one specific opportunity. In the fourth chapter, this limitationwas addressed by examining the impact of the education level and driverU+2019s license U+2013 and, therefore, the transport mode U+2013 on access to job opportunities. As such, the chapter aimed to focus on the planning policy gap on the relationship between disadvantaged population groups and their spatio-temporal, multimodal access to employment. The chapterU+2019s results highlightedthe importance of both a higher educational level and driverU+2019s license ownership to maximize oneU+2019s accessible job opportunities. This exposed important aspects of inequity in job seekersU+2019 access to job opportunities, especially for the most vulnerable groups, which has important ramifications for both spatial planning and transport policies in Flanders. In addition to the vast amount of literature on accessibility, the first three case studies started from the general assumption that higher levels of potential accessibility lead to higher levels of perceived participation and satisfaction. However, to date, no clear pattern of correlation between an individualU+2019s accessibility and his or her participation in activities has been found due to the aggregated and often place-based nature of the applied methodologies. The fifth chapter examined this relationship by comparing an aggregated, place-based accessibility measure to an individual, person-based accessibility measure. The study underlined the need for more person-based accessibility analysis, as it proved better suited to address the accessibilityparticipation relationship, as would logically be expected. The place-based method, on the contrary, showed an improbable, negative relation with activity participation, indicating the possible counterintuitive conclusions that might be drawn from using these measures. Although the chapter illustrated the relationship with accessibility, it is unclear to what extent lower accessibility leads to aspects of social exclusion on the individual level. In the sixth chapter, the relationship between transport disadvantage and employability was examined by assessing job seekersU+2019 accessibility to job openings that correspond to their individual preferences and competences. The resulting model allowed to capture the person-specific labor-market opportunities for an individual and construct a predictive model for long-term unemployment, in addition to the predictive capacity of various socio-demographics. The chapter pinpointed that in Flanders, various inequities in longterm unemployment exist, with some groups having two or three times higher probabilities of being long-term unemployed. The seventh chapter summarized the degree to which the various case studies have succeeded in answering the problem statement and research question. As hypothesized, person-based, space-time accessibility measures provide numerous advantages over the commonly applied place-based measures. Nonetheless, they also pose new limitations, especially in terms of data requirements, calculation complexity and policy implementation. Herein, a constraints-led approach is constructed and three important focal points are defined: 1) delineating the constraints and defining concepts of social and transport disadvantages, transport equity and social exclusion, 2) perception and communication of possible transport-related equity issues through (academic) research, and 3) establishing policy-based interventions for transport equity appraisal. These three focal points are translated into a number of policy recommendations. First of all, a clearer and more comprehensive definition of equity in transportation is needed. This will allow policy makers to set clear goals and provide researchers with a foundation to objectively assess if these goals were, are or will be met in transport investments. This definition should travel beyond the spatial dimension and incorporate temporal and personal restrictions. Herein, a better coordination between academia and policy is a necessity, as academic research has the ability to provide a solid foundation for policy support. Moreover, transportation is too frequently addressed as an isolated policy domain. The way people travel has a strong impact on their built environment and the quality of life, and, as such, is strongly related to, for example,spatial planning, housing or economics, or a wide range of other policy domains. Research in the field of transportation U+2013 be it within academia or policy U+2013 should aim to better accommodate the link with other research domains, especially with spatial planning. Going beyond a merely spatial point of view by addressing temporal and individual aspects can support a more effective fine-tuning to other policy domains. Finally, transport policy should focus more strongly on fostering participation and dialogue in order to attain a more equitable distribution of transport benefits. The conceptual framework supported by the case studies as proposed in this dissertation provides a theoretical background in person-based accessibility measuresU+2019 ability to better highlight and address transport equity issues. Nonetheless, these assumptions should be underlined by translating this theoretical background to real-life applications in the field. This is only possible through thorough participation with the various stakeholders that shape accessibility in space and time. Future accessibility research should bear in mind the proposedwork areas in order to better answer the projected policy recommendations." "Understanding Latin American Challenges in the 21st Century" "Jan Wouters" "Institute for International Law" "Social, political, and cultural transformation, a fast-changing global economy, geopolitical tensions and global uncertainties have created a markedly different context from the previous era of European Union (EU) policies towards Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The doctoral network LAC-EU will establish a novel, comprehensive and interdisciplinary framework to understand LAC and its relationship with the EU, fostering respectful, non-Eurocentric research and engagement. It will enable a better understanding of current challenges in Latin American governance and support sustainable, equitable and successful relations between the EU and LAC.LAC-EU offers doctoral candidates an outstanding, integrated four-year PhD programme and provides world class, interdisciplinary research and training in social and political sciences, law and the humanities, as well as research exchanges and policy-relevant secondments at associated partners in the EU and LAC. Research themes within LAC-EU include the rise of populism, democracy, gender rights, trade, migration, health, global cities, sustainability and green finance and cultural learning.The LAC-EU doctoral programme comprises an interdisciplinary, multi-sectoral network composed of four leading European universities, an outstanding LAC higher education institution and key, highly relevant civil society and policy partners from a range of European and LAC countries. It offers an exceptional combination of academic and research-related training and transferable skills to deliver scientific excellence, occupational mobility and preparation for lifelong, policy-relevant learning for a new generation of researchers. Furthermore, it provides the EU with the vital inputs needed to design coherent, sustainable, equitable and comprehensive policies towards LAC and to promote an effective and respectful interregional engagement that enhances the potential for mutually beneficial partnerships in global and multilateral fora." "The role of students’ characteristics, self-regulated learning and cognitive abilities on prediction of students’ academic outcomes in blended learning." "Martin Euwema" "Work, Organisational and Personnel Psychology" "Introduction Recent technical advances in information and communication technologies (ICT), and other societal transformations have changed the way people communicate, interact, and are taught. The advent and exponential growth of the internet resulted in new trends and uses of media in the creation of learning environments in educational settings. Consequently, the learning environments are altered dramatically in terms of new opportunities and challenges to design, develop, and implement effective instruction. This trend affected even developing countries, including Albania. One of the biggest problems that we face nowadays is that students’ lack of competences, such as critical thinking, self-management and problem solving which are needed in our society (Melo, 2013), which are reflected in their academic outcomes. According to a World Bank Rapport (2017), higher education faces many perennial challenges, including expanding and promoting equitable access, improving learning achievement, fostering educational quality and relevance, strengthening knowledge and technology transfer, and encouraging desired values, behaviors, and attitudes. From an external perspective, quality is associated with higher education’s contributions to society, including economic and social benefits. From a student-centric approach, quality in learning focuses on student prior experience (Tam, 2001). The main characteristics of a student-centered approach are: students’ self-reliance, the role of the teacher as a facilitator and previous knowledge, and the main example of it is problem-solving and project-based learning knowledge (Dochy, Segers, Gijbels & Van den Bossche, 2002). According to Dochy ,Janssens and Gisele (2006) a student-centered approach aims to provide a deeper approach to students’ learning. Also, as Thorne (2014) stated, collaboration and interaction help in developing students’ intelligence: mobilizing attention, improving perception and memory. Based on the previous statements, blended learning helps students to overcome these difficulties and facilitate and support students’ learning processes by enhancing content learning, increasing accessibility for students in remote and regional areas, facilitating deeper scholarly enquiry, and encouraging staff to develop innovative, collaborative, and flexible teaching and learning practices (Graham, 2006; Milthorpe, Clarke, & Fletcher, 2017). Pelleth Yohannan (2010) found that online learning could provide students with opportunity for increased interactive engagement (more than that is normally possible in 'face-to-face-only' or 'online-only' environments), flexibility and cognitive scaffolding that enhanced their learning experience. Based on these researches, the aim of this study is to investigate the role of students’ characteristics and background (e.g., self-regulation, perception (P) motivation (M), perceived flexibility (PF), engagement (E) and cognitive skills (WM/attention and/or general intelligence), as well as learning strategies (LS) on students’ performance in blended learning (BL). Research objectives and hypothesis: The following objectives were formulated for the research: o To examine learner characteristics and background in a blended learning environment compared to those in a traditional learning environment. o To study the mediating role of general intelligence, WM, executive attention, learning strategies and SRL on learning outcomes in a blended learning environment compared to those in a traditional learning environment. o To determine the participation of students’ cognitive skills (WM, attention,), LS, self-regulation variables and background characteristics in predicting students’ learning outcomes in a blended learning environment compared to a traditional learning environment. This study is guided by four main specific hypotheses: Past researches have contributed to the understanding of the relationship between students’ characteristics background (self-regulation, perception (P) motivation (M), perceived flexibility (PF) and engagement (E), learning strategies (LS)) and cognitive skills (WM, attention skills ) and they found a positive relationship between them, but there are limited in terms of investigating their relationship in blended learning context in developed countries. (Musso, Boekaerts & Cascallar, 2019; Laer & Elen, 2016; Cascallar & Boekaerts 2006). According to Manwaring, Larsen, Graham, Brigham & Halverson, (2017); Laer & Elen, (2016); Dembo, (2004) students show higher levels of SRL factors, perception (P) motivation (M), perceived learning (PL) and engagement (E) in blended learning, and learner background characteristics influence on students’ academic outcomes ( Cascallar & Boekaerts, 2006; Musso, Boekaerts, Segers & Cascallar, 2019). Based on these previous researches the following hypotheses are formulated: o Students show higher levels of SRL factors, perception (P) motivation (M), perceived learning (PL) and engagement (E) in blended learning when compared to studying in a traditional learning (TL) setting. o Learner background characteristics will show a higher contribution to the prediction of students learning outcomes in blended learning rather than traditional learning Musso, Boekaerts, Segers & Cascallar (2019) pointed out that WM and attention influenced academic outcomes. Cobanoglu and Yurdakul (2014); San, Lim & Morris (2015; 2009); Ramirez‐Arellano, Acosta‐Gonzaga, Bory‐Reyes & Hernández‐Simón (2017; 2018) stressed the influence of WM and attention in students’ thinking, exploring the subject matter, sharing their opinions, discussing and appraising others’ opinions in blended context. . It was also shown that students gained different perspectives and were able to think more deeply and critically, and that students were able to transfer those skills to real-life education, when BL was implemented. Based in this research the following hypotheses can be formulated: o WM will show higher contribution than Executive Attention in predicting students’ academic outcomes. o Cognitive skills (WM, attention and/or General intelligence) will show a higher contribution to the prediction of students learning outcomes in blended learning rather than in traditional learning settings. Methodology: Methods and design A mixed methodological approach will be followed in this study. Therefore, quantitative and qualitative research methods will be applied, and a triangulation research design will be used. Therefore, qualitative results will be used to validate and to support quantitative results providing evidence in support of the validity and reliability of the research. Participants Students of the first and the second year of English instruction at the university level will be selected for the study. A non-random sample of students will be selected to participate in a survey. Two experimental and two control groups of freshman and sophomore students as a non-random sample (full class sections) will be selected to participate in this research. Instruments A structured questionnaire will be used to survey a non-random sample of students. A focus group-interview will be used to interview five focused groups of students, and a semi-structured interview will be used to interview the sample of lecturers. A survey instrument will be used to gather the data during the English language classes. Automated Operation Span (AOSPAN) and Attention Network Test (ANT) could be used to measure the WM and attention. LASSI could be used to measure learning strategies. (Kwong, Wong & Downing, 2009). Procedure and Data Analysis The results obtained from the administration of the various instruments will be summarized in a synthetic way to use as the basis for the analysis of the findings. A General Linear Model (GLM)approach and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) will be used to study differences between groups, as well as the structural pattern of the results. ANOVAs analyses will be used to assess the differences in perceived learning, posttest, and learning outcomes means between the control and experimental groups based on learner variables. Repeated measures ANOVA will be used to test if differences exist for the perceived learning and actual learning outcomes over the time period between the ‘before’ and ‘after’ conditions in each semester based on the learner variables. The hypothesis that investigates the relationship between the blended learning approach, self-regulations, perception (P) motivation (M), perceived flexibility (PF), engagement, working memory and attention of students in English teaching and academic achievements of students will be tested using structural equation models. In addition, predictive models will be explored, using both traditional regression techniques (linear and non-linear logistic regression) as well as several machine-learning methods, with multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural networks with back propagation algorithms among them, to explore the prediction of learning outcomes in both modalities of teaching with the available information from the students, and determine the contribution of each set of variables to the correct predictive classification of the performance level. Other methods that will be explored include: decision trees, Naïve Bayes, Random Forest, and Gradient Boosted Trees. The study will compare results from these various methods and will discuss the optimization of the predictive classification by each approach, compared to classical generalized linear model approaches and logistic regression." "Multilingualism Workshop Southern Africa" "objectives:1. Information exchange about the solutions that have been adopted in different university contexts in the South.2. In-depth study of how institutions respond to multilingualism3. Developing an equitable and efficient language learning/support policy for the university.4. Defining scientific writing as a key compentency in higher education throughout the educational career." "BDU-IUC Phase II: VLIR-UOS IUC partnership project with Bahir Dar University (BDU)" "Amaury Frankl" "Department of Geography, Bahir Dar University" "The Lake Tana Development Corridor (LTDC) in Ethiopia is a vital economic development area around Lake Tana, with agriculture and fisheries, tourism, trade and industry, and transport being the major economic activities. Among the most pressing issues are poor food security, persistent difficulties with water availability and quality and a lack of environmental sustainability and good governance in regional development. Poverty presents a significant obstacle to sustainable development. People living in poverty may lack the resources and financial means to invest in sustainable resource management practices, such as erosion control, fish management or efficient irrigation systems. This can limit their ability to improve their living conditions. To bring about significant changes in the LTDC, research and capacity building for farming and local communities in general are essential. Targeted approaches are needed to accelerate sustainable land management and economic growth in poverty-affected areas and communities and we need to create an enabling environment for women to actively participate in all levels of economic, social, and political activities.The VLIR-OUS funded BDU-IUC phase 2 project has the ambition to establish an African centre of excellence on food and environment. The capacity of Bahir Dar University and regional stakeholder organisations will be strengthened on specific Agenda 2030 sustainable development targets in order to support the regional development towards creating future-proof healthy ecosystems and equitable resilient economy.The project supported by a group of approximately 100 researchers both at Flemish Higher Education Institutions and Bahir Dar University (Ethiopia), and counts 16 PhD students. The project has a budget of 2.6 M EUR and will phase out in 2027."