Projects
Constitutionalism and Deliberative Democratic Representation: A Normative Theory of Constitutional Debates KU Leuven
Citizens are properly represented only insofar as politicians publicly debate and justify their decisions, especially when reforming the constitution. Otherwise, legislators may either subvert the norms granting them their competences, or lessen entrenched fundamental rights and liberties. Given the legal distinctiveness of constitutions, guarantees that politicians discuss and justify their constitutional decisions must be put in place for ...
Perspectives on reality: Investigating the emergence of scientific narratives about experiments and their results. University of Antwerp
In search of a true vita canonica. Normative texts and their manuscripts as alternative witnesses for the emergence of the canonical reform movement (9th-11th century) KU Leuven
Traditionally the history of the religious orders is narrated along the
lines of a pattern of rise, decline, and reform. The historiography of
the canonical order is no exception. Decades of steady decline are
said to have been followed around the middle of the 11th century by
a period of reform, culminating in the emergence of a new type of
religious – the ‘regular’ canon –, as opposed to the non-reformed ...
Normative and intentional development of teacher social-emotional skills and their relationships with student achievement and socialemotional skills. Ghent University
Teachers have been ascribed a central role in students’ learning and development. Especially how
teachers relate to their students was proposed as a key factor explaining learning effects and
teacher effectiveness. However, recent meta-analytic research suggests that teachers’ self-efficacy
and personality traits show only small associations with student academic performance.
Today’s thinking in education further ...
Towards a “post-lyric” poetry? The “narrative turn” in Italian poetry between 1955 and 1975. KU Leuven
In his 1956 essay La posizione, published in the literary journal «Officina», Pier Paolo Pasolini raised the necessity of “adjusting […] the periscope to the horizon, the immense horizon of phenomena” as an instrument of literary criticism capable of overcoming what he perceived to be the “posizionalismo” or perspectivistic stance of communism towards literature and the arts. When put in a broader perspective, though, the ...
A rhetorical-narratological approach to figurativeness in narrative settings, applied to eventful German prose literature between early modernity and poetic realism (1660-1880) Ghent University
The research project undertakes a systematic analysis of the interference between complex figurative and stylistic processes, on the one hand, and layered narrative settings, on the other, in a historically differentiated corpus of eventful narrative texts (Grimmelshausen, Forster, Kleist, Meyer, Keller, Raabe). Special attention is being paid to the cotextual embeddedness of the figurative processes and to the ways in which they elicit the ...
Performing culture in youth courts: An active ethnography of narrative negotiations Ghent University
The project explores the ways in which the notion ‘culture’ is mobilised in youth courts. This institutional context is underpinned by "it's for your own good" ideals, entailing a constant balancing between protecting and punishing young people. Professionals also need to take into account youth's overall background. Previous research has shown that 'mundane' understandings of ‘culture' influence these assessments and at times negatively ...