Research Resources – List

The Dutch Scientific Institutes Abroad (NWIBs) are advanced scientific posts of the Dutch universities. These institutes are mainly located around the Mediterranean: in Athens, Cairo, Florence and Rome. The institutes are aimed at supporting and realizing scientific education and research, and also make a substantial contribution to the profiling of Dutch higher education abroad. The institutes are jointly managed by Dutch Universities.

PIE is a platform for Dutch institutes that cooperate with partner institutes in the Global South. The overall aim is to contribute to global and local sustainable development, both in countries and regions where partner institutes are based and in the Netherlands. The main focus is on cooperation in post-secondary education, in scientific and applied research and knowledge development, and in innovation through knowledge application.

UnILiON is an informal network of Brussels liaison offices representing excellent universities based in Europe and Japan. The network represents an arena of exchange where the participants share information, nurture collaboration and act as information multipliers towards the represented organisations.Thanks to UnILiON you can easily access some of the most active research, higher education and innovation players in Europe and beyond.

Seven research groups from the faculty of Movement and Behavioral Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam conduct experimental research involving humans and make use of advanced methods of research. One of the goals of the institute is to foster the exchange and development of advanced knowledge for neuro-imaging methods of research. The institute will work as a research incubator where researchers and students work together to push the limits of advanced methods of research.

LEARN! is an interdisciplinary research institute on learning in an institutional and societal context. We bring together colleagues from the behavioural, social, medical and educational sciences to understand: The Micro context of learning of children and adults; The Meso context: the classroom, school organisation, day-care centers, work-based settings or adult colleges; The Macro context: the coordination and governance of learning by school boards, local and national governance.

Philosophical research carried out in the department can be split up according to the three traditional domains: historical, theoretical, practical. The department houses specialists in freedom and responsibility, integrity, the epistemic role of universities, Enlightened thinking and German Idealism, market ethics, the philosophy of psychiatry, the nature of scientific explanations, epistemology of mathematics, and the history of ancient and medieval metaphysics and scientific philosophy.

The History education and research is distinguishing itself with an approach in which European history is not the obvious starting point, and which includes long-term perspectives. The department’s research is organised primarily in the VU’s Interfaculty Research Institute for Culture, Cognition, History and Heritage, CLUE+. Professors, academic staff and PhD students pursue interdisciplinary collaboration, embedded in the research programmes of the various chairs.

Research groups of Language, Literature and Communication have multiple focuses. One of them is developing new perspectives for adults and children with hearing difficulties. Another group looks at how people communicate issues of science and technology in their everyday lives, using Discursive Psychology and Conversation Analysis. There is also an investigation on language use and cognition from the perspective of multimodal communication.

CLUE+ brings together researchers from a wide variety of academic disciplines, to work on joint projects, reflect upon societal challenges and formulate strategies for addressing those challenges. Following the general VU profile themes, the focus is on challenges in the realm of connectedness, sustainability and governance. CLUE+ aims to provide an inspiring research climate for talented young academics as well as for senior and top researchers.

The Eep Talstra Centre for Bible and Computer (ETCBC) develops and maintains an advanced syntactic database of the Hebrew Bible. The methodology of the ETCBC prioritises syntactic analysis over semantic, literary, or rhetorical analysis. Formal indicators, rather than functional, comprise the framework of the database. Linguistic information is encoded hierarchically at the word, phrase, clause, and text levels.

The VU Amsterdam Center for Strategizing & Organizing Innovation is dedicated to groundbreaking research and advice on how companies and other organizations can structurally boost their innovation performance and become world-class innovators. Our mission is to provide businesses, their leaders, and the academic community with key insights how to make innovation into a structural success, instead of aiming for incidental hits.

The Center is one of the larger academic groups worldwide with a focus on consulting and professional service firms (PSF). In our teaching we prepare students for a role as junior consultants with a broad and open mind. In our research we focus on the roles and responsibility of professions in our society, and aim to better understand the challenges they and their clients face, be it digitalization, work pressures, diversity, or sustainable innovations.

The VU Center for Diversity and Inclusion in Organizations brings together academics, practitioners, policy makers and other stakeholders to engage in research and find solutions to complex gender and diversity challenges facing organisations. Besides taking a stand, and doing what is right, research continues to show that inclusive organisations outperform organisations in which this topic is taken for granted.

The VU Center for Business & Society aspires to advance research on the role of business in society, driven by the broader question of how businesses are managed, led and organized in order to ensure social and ecological sustainability and contribute to the greater good. The Center is devoted to interdisciplinary, collaborative and impactful research and be recognized as a global thought leader in research on sustainable business practices in and around organizations, markets and society at large.

VU Center for Enterprise Family Research studies enterprises at the family level and aims to be a platform of expertise on how to best prepare the rising generation (siblings or cousins who inherit family assets) to be responsible enterprise owners and figure out for themselves which role they want to play in the oversight and management of the enterprise family. As a research platform, the Center offers opportunities for research and executive collaboration between scholars and practitioners.

The VU Center for Ecosystems is a center of expertise, which aims to be platform for research, education, and valorization. Propagating cross-disciplinary and multi-level research into the emergence, governance, and transformation of ecosystem organizing the center organizes research colloquia (e.g. mini-conferences) to advance a research community on ecosystems. Furthermore, the center will disseminate the results of its an annual ecosystem survey assessing state-of-the-art ecosystem practices.

The VU Center for Boards and Executive Leadership Development aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of factors influencing the decision-making of boards, including board members and CEO characteristics, behavioural patterns, governance structures and regulatory requirements. With a mission to create knowledge that can help top management teams to develop and to better lead contemporary organisations, we aim to explore the interplay of multiple factors that shape the performance of boards and top executives within the boards.

The VU Center for Feedback Culture is a center of expertise that aims to be a platform for research to examine how feedback culture can be cultivated in organizations in different fields and across different countries. The Center offers opportunities for research and executive education collaborations between scholars and practitioners who are interested in the topic. Specifically, the Center aims to bring researchers and practitioners together by organizing sessions where practices and insights can be shared.

The SERVUS originated from an active group of researchers and practitioners at amongst others the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Greenleaf Centre Europe, THTConsulting, VUMedical Centre and VU School of Business and Economics. At a meta level, we see the main reason for SERVUS’ existence: to meet the needs of future generations of leaders to be effective in diverse (business) environments, through the development of a robust new paradigm of servant- leadership in research and education.

ADRIBA is a platform for the scientific deepening, broadening and dissemination of behavioral analysis and Organizational Behavior Management (OBM), the science of behavioral change in organisations. Performance, or performance, is central to ADRIBA. The starting point is a performance issue within an organization. We see improving performance best through the principle of shaping. In other words: a step better every time. Measurable.

Research in the Strategic Management group is diverse but united by a common desire to understand and explain organizational phenomena in the context of global competition. Our research ethos reflects an appreciation for multiple form of inquiry and we bring together expertise in quantitative and qualitative methodologies, ranging from on-site field-work and in-depth participant observation to experimental studies in laboratory settings. We study organizations and their strategies applying a multifaceted toolkit of theories, such as contingency theory, the resource-based view, institutional theory, and identity theory.

The Organizational Theory group broadly addresses the processes in which individuals, and groups, and corporate structures interact and how these processes influence and are influenced by their contexts. In particular, we focus on organizational transformation from multiple perspectives and using a multi-disciplinary approach.

The purpose of the VU Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management (HRM) research group is to create knowledge that can enable organisations to understand and proactively manage the current realignments and shifts in employment practices, technology, demography, and organisational structures. Our research is organized in five core themes: careers and meaningful work, the future of work design, leadership and organisational change, talent management, and diversity management and inclusion.

VU activities in the field of entrepreneurship are bundled in the Center of Entrepreneurship at VU (CfE@VU). Nevertheless, the VU activities in the field of entrepreneurship are spread all over the university, even literally over the whole VU campus. Some examples are the famous courses in entrepreneurship for science students and for human movement students. The research activities are often joint efforts by international and Multidisciplinary teams.

The Ethics, Governance and Society (EGS) department is known for research and teaching on ethical dilemmas and implications of a broad range of global governance themes. EGS is a Multidisciplinary group of scholars focusing on governance and ethics issues related to decision making in organizations, institutions, markets and society. Drawing on insights from a variety of disciplines in the social sciences, Health and humanities, and a wide range of methods (including philosophical and formal logic and mathematical modelling), EGS develops theoretical and formal frameworks that provide insights into social dynamics and their ethical and governance aspects.

The KIN Center for Digital Innovation researches the development and use of digital innovations in organizations. Our interdisciplinary group of 35 researchers offers state-of-the-art expertise in the broad field of digital innovation; from the development of smart technologies in ecosystems to changing working methods under the influence of AI, from crowdsourcing via online platforms to the changing role of the IT organization. Typical to KIN is its ‘embedded research’: research in close collaboration with industry partners.

Research efforts are aimed at analyzing data-driven decision-making problems arising in industry and society, in particular related to Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Sustainability and Networks. By examining the mathematical structure and properties of these decision-making problems and by developing novel data analysis and optimization methods, the Department offers academic and practical insights on how to tackle contemporary challenges.

The Department of Spatial Economics offers insights and applications in urban, regional, transport and environmental challenges from a primarily economic perspective, often enriched through multi-disciplinary collaborations. The 60 staff members are involved in both fundamental research as well as in national and international commissioned research. With this research, the department has gained national and international recognition, as shown by the large number of international publications and citations.

The research is characterized by a strong emphasis on relevance for business and society, and is centred around social marketing (e.g., health, sustainability, public policy). These topics are investigated from different perspectives, often bridging the three sub disciplines, for instance by applying behavioural theories to strategic issues or by combining experimental data with modelling approaches. In recent years, the Department has invested highly in its research program.

The Finance department at VU Amsterdam is a solid and growing department within the School of Business and Economics. With more than 30 faculty members the department of finance conducts world-leading research in major fields of finance. Members of our department have received prestigious research and teaching awards and publish regularly in all major finance and economics journals, such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Finance and Journal of Financial Economics.

In recent decades, inequality in the world has been increasing. Governance for Society looks at the underlying causes of inequality and how they relate to differences between regions, between urban and rural areas, and between educational levels. For example, Professor of Policy Evaluation Bas van der Klaauw focuses his research on economic inequality. What makes someone successful? And to what extent does education play a role in this?

The Econometrics and Data Science department aims at pushing the academic frontier in methodology development for quantitative, statistical modeling of data, ranging from machine learning methods to more traditional statistical and econometric techniques.Our teaching mission is to empower students with the methodological skills and continuing curiosity to contribute to solving today’s challenges in business and economics using the most up-to-date statistical and econometric tools.

ARCA’s main objective is to facilitate and stimulate fundamental and applied research in the following areas: Financial Accounting and Financial Reporting, Management Accounting, Management Control, Accounting Information Systems, and Auditing. ARCA is also committed to bridge the gap between the academic community and practice by conducting commissioned research and by disseminating research outcomes among a wider audience.

The advancement of knowledge in all aspects of human reproduction and development through interdisciplinary team science aimed at improving health from preconception to adulthood of current and future generations. We are inspired by a future of continuous and sustainable improvement in health for all. We aspire a role at the forefront of fundamental, translational, and clinical science and public health research in human reproduction and development, creating a knowledge hub to guide science that serves the wider society.

The Amsterdam Public Health research institute (APH) is a network institute and forms an important link between intramural clinical care, scientific research, and the extramural care practice in the metropolitan area Amsterdam. Much research performed within APH has the potential to have a direct impact on the society and in practice. This is embedded within our mission: Public Health: health for all, powered by science.

Amsterdam Neuroscience is the research institute for neuroscience of Amsterdam UMC and the science faculties of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the University of Amsterdam. Researchers and clinicians from these three institutions join forces in the field of fundamental, translational and clinical brain research. This collaboration strengthens the scientific excellence in this area, making Amsterdam Neuroscience one of the largest neuroscience communities in Europe.

Amsterdam Movement Sciences focuses on human movement, a key issue for today’s society, and approaches this in a broad interdisciplinary composition, covering from fundamental to clinical and from cellular to population research. The institute aims at being world leading in the field of interdisciplinary translational research on human movement and physical performance, and to disseminate its results to end-users so that society benefits optimally from our research results.

The mission of the Amsterdam institute for Infection and Immunity (AII) is to develop knowledge and expertise to prevent, diagnose or treat infectious diseases, inflammatory diseases and cancer. The need to focus and combine research activities in the research programs inflammatory diseases, infectious diseases and cancer immunology is crucial in order to identify common and novel immune correlates and pathways to work towards innovative treatment regimens.

AGEM unites the research at the Amsterdam UMC involved at the intersection of nutrition, microbiology, digestion, endocrinology and metabolism and aims to make an important contribution to improve gastrointestinal, endocrine and metabolic health and reduce the burden of diseases such as colorectal cancer (CRC), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), diabetes mellitus (DM) and phenylketonuria (PKU).

The Amsterdam Cardiovascular Sciences (ACS) research institute aims to design novel treatment strategies to prevent and cure cardiovascular disease. We organized the cardiovascular research in Amsterdam in five Research Programs in which all aspects of translational research are embedded, covering research from the bench to the bedside and vice versa.

Cancer Center Amsterdam is an academic oncology center that aims to create groundbreaking new possibilities for patients with cancer. To achieve this, we integrate world-class research with healthcare and education to boldly push boundaries and discover new insights and opportunities. By making direct use of the knowledge obtained from our research, we can provide the best innovative and compassionate care for patients with cancer.

The Centre for Climate Change, Corporations and the Law conducts research in the field where Law, Corporations and Climate Change meet. Research in this field has become increasingly relevant due to the broad consensus that climate change forms a direct threat to humanity. While the Law has the purpose of protecting legitimate human interests and businesses play a key role in controlling greenhouse gas emissions.

The ACFL researchers have diverse expertise in the field of Dutch, comparative and European law of persons, family and juvenile law, and behavioral sciences. An important goal of ACFL is to pool this knowledge of its researchers and to create an optimal environment for the combination of classical legal national, comparative law and Multidisciplinary (empirical) research. Furthermore, ACFL aims to contribute to the scientific debate on the development of Dutch family law, as well as to the broad international discourse on the development of family & law in Europe and beyond.

The CICJ is an independent non-partisan university center dedicated to interdisciplinary academic research and education, policy analysis and debate on international crimes, international and transitional justice, as well as conceptual and institutional responses to mass atrocity. The Center’s staff is specialized in different fields of study, including international law, criminal law, criminology, (legal) psychology and anthropology, and in methods of social sciences research.

The aim is to track the multiplicity of complex developments in migration law that take place at the international, European and national levels. Research is conducted on diverse topics, as asylum and refugee law and family reunion law. This implies research into the human costs of border control, the intersection between the family and migration law, the role of the judiciary, the relation between (irregular) migration and the welfare state, the EU principle of mutual trust and the role of time in migration law.

The Department of Criminal Law and Criminology conducts research and provides education that focuses on fighting and preventing crime. Criminality and the fight against it are at the pinnacle of public interest. Not a day goes by without the media reporting of new crimes and of new penal cases. In daily life, a large group of professionals are involved in the combating and prevention of crime: a task for which proper and detailed knowledge of criminal law and criminology is indispensable. The Department of Criminal Law and Criminology makes an important contribution to this end, first and foremost, by offering various courses and education programs in the legal and socio-scientific fields. Furthermore, the Department contributes to the academic and social debate by publishing numerous scientific articles and delivering specialized lectures. The use of substantive and procedural criminal law in our society, taking also into account processes of globalization, digitalization and new technological developments, is at the forefront of our focus. The members of our Department also share their knowledge by participating in advisory committees, training professionals and through other secondary activities. The connection between academia, society and legal practice is thus ingrained in the functioning of the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology.

The EUA Council for Doctoral Education (EUA-CDE) strives to be an inclusive community of academic leaders and professionals. We welcome membership applications from all European universities awarding doctoral degrees and institutions working on issues related to doctoral education and research training. EUA-CDE brings together the largest community of academic leaders and professionals working on doctoral education and research training in Europe.

SURF is a cooperative association of Dutch educational and research institutions in which the members combine their strengths. Within SURF, we work together to acquire or develop the best possible digital services, and to encourage knowledge sharing through continuous innovation. The members are the owners of SURF.

Research and data management software for open science. OSF is a free, open platform to support your research and enable collaboration. OSF Institutions enhances transparency and increases the visibility of research outputs, accelerating discovery and reuse. Institutional members focus on generating and sharing research, and let OSF Institutions handle the infrastructure.

EIT Climate-KIC is a Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC), working to accelerate the transition to a zero-carbon, climate-resilient society. EIT Climate-KIC runs a range of inspirational education programmes across Europe and online, for students, postgraduates and professionals. These programmes develop their participants’ skills and capacities, empowering them with up-to-date knowledge and best practice.

In Universities of The Netherlands (UNL), Dutch universities work together towards a strong university sector. The 14 Dutch universities within Universities of The Netherlands show the outside world how they fulfil their social function, formulate shared ambitions relating to academic education and research and valorisation, and lobby for the preconditions needed to realise these ambitions. UNL office identifies, prioritises and supports the association’s steering groups and Board.

LIBER supports and speaks up on behalf of university, national and special libraries – their institutions and their users – across Europe. LIBER (Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche – Association of European Research Libraries) is the voice of Europe’s RESEARCH LIBRARY community. Approximately 420 national, university and other libraries are part of LIBER and our wider network includes goal-oriented partnerships with other organisations in Europe and beyond.

University Social Responsibility Network (USRN) is a global network for the promotion of social responsibility as a core component of the university mission. USRN provides its participating members with an effective platform for productive collaboration in all USR fields, thus forming the vanguard for the global spread of social responsibility. The platform has 20 participating universities spread across the global continents.

The aim of the NAR is to follow the course of development of individuals with autism over time, primarily through online questionnaires. We collect information on a wide range of topics related to the living situation of people with autism in the Netherlands. This way we can identify the differences and similarities between people with autism. The data from the NAR are valuable for scientific research. The NAR also helps people with autism to protect their interests and improve their quality of life. Parents of children with autism, people with autism, but also health care professionals and scientists all have questions about autism. Together, we can find answers to these questions. For instance, one person with autism may be able to hold a job, and have a satisfying social life, while the other one, despite similar cognitive skills, fails to do so. What causes such individual differences? What additional problems do individuals with autism develop? What are the benefits of having autism? What are success factors? By following a large group of people we can explore what factors have an impact on their quality of life.

The research carried out by the Netherlands Twin Register focuses on the role of heritability in mental and physical health. For instance, the NTR investigates why some people become more easily depressed than others, or why certain people get diabetes while others don’t. Other research areas include lifestyle and habits that influence health and disease, such as smoking, drinking and exercise.

FIRMBACKBONE is an organically growing longitudinal data-infrastructure with information on Dutch companies for academic research. Once it is ready, it will become available for researchers affiliated with universities in the Netherlands through ODISSEI, the Open Data Infrastructure for Social Science and Economic Innovations. FIRMBACKBONE is an initiative of and collaboration between Utrecht University and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Why? The digitalization of our society and economy has enabled novel methods of data collection and analysis of companies. Such digital data are both deep (i.e., detailed) and long (i.e., over time) in scope and harbor much potential for creating new economic insights and applications. However, academic researchers in (applied) economics and adjacent fields (e.g., management, entrepreneurship, economic geography and history) currently lack access to a comprehensive and longitudinal data source on Dutch companies. Often-heard complaints from researchers are that such data are too expensive to obtain or not user-friendly. How? A “backbone” will be created that contains a list of company names and company numbers that are publicly accessible. We will enrich the data with additional public information (e.g., through web scraping of company websites) and by collaborating with local data suppliers.

ODISSEI (Open Data Infrastructure for Social Science and Economic Innovations) is the national research infrastructure for the social sciences in the Netherlands. ODISSEI brings together researchers with the necessary data, expertise and resources to conduct ground-breaking research and embrace the computational turn in social enquiry. Through ODISSEI, researchers have access to large-scale, longitudinal data collections as well as innovative and diverse new forms of data.

DANS is the Dutch national centre of expertise and repository for research data. We help researchers make their data available for reuse. This allows researchers to use the data for new research and makes published research verifiable and reproducible. With more than 180,000 datasets and a staff of 60, DANS is one of the leading repositories in Europe.

The Imagebase presents highlights from the University Library of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. It contains high quality images and detailed descriptions of various collections, a valuable source for both national and international research. What may you find in the Imagebase? On offer are: clay tablets and other objects from the Near and Middle East, engraved portraits of protestant leaders (ca. 1500), historical maps (before 1900), and many other resources. The images are of high quality with detailed descriptions which make them suitable for national and international researchers.

The special and historical collections comprise 26 separate collections (see overview, soon available in English: https://vu.nl/nl/over-de-vu/meer-over/zwaartepunten).
Focal points include Reformation prints, English prints, pamphlets and portraits.

Digital Humanities: because of their size, some sub-collections can be interesting for computational methods of research. We have made an overview of potentially interesting collections for digital humanities.

Mass spectrometry is an analytical tool useful for measuring the mass-to-charge ratio (m/z) of one or more molecules present in a sample. These measurements can often be used to calculate the exact molecular weight of the sample components as well. Typically, mass spectrometers can be used to identify unknown compounds via molecular weight determination, to quantify known compounds, and to determine structure and chemical properties of molecules.

NMR is an abbreviation for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. An NMR instrument allows the molecular structure of a material to be analyzed by observing and measuring the interaction of nuclear spins when placed in a powerful magnetic field. For the analysis of molecular structure at the atomic level, electron microscopes and X-ray diffraction instruments can also be used, but the advantages of NMR are that sample measurements are non-destructive and there is less sample preparation required. Fields of application include biology, foods, and chemistry, as well as new fields such as battery films and organic electroluminescence, which are improving and developing at remarkable speed. NMR has become an indispensable analysis tool in cutting-edge science and technology fields.