Over the past few years, I have been privileged to study at two great universities: the University of Groningen in the Netherlands for my undergraduate degrees, and King's College London in the United Kingdom for my master's degree.
King's College London, United Kingdom
- Master's in Conflict, Security and Development (2015-2016)
University of Groningen, Netherlands
- Bachelor's in International Relations and International Organisation (2010-2015)
- Bachelor's in Philosophy of a Specific Discipline (2013-2015)
- Various courses of Middle Eastern Studies (2013-2015)
Here is a selection of the papers I have written for university. These papers are by no means peer-reviewed, published journal articles, but they do give insight in what I have focused on during my time at university.
On the Promise and Peril of Open Source Evidence: A Case-Study of Two International Air Campaigns in Syria and Iraq
Using the international air campaigns of the international Coalition and the Russian Ministry of Defence as a case study,this MA dissertation examines the promises and perils of open source evidence. The first chapterexamines the influence of the Information Revolution on two models of human rightspropagation and socialisation: Keck and Sikkink’s boomerang model and Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink’s spiral models. It will be shownthat clusters of digital technologies create ‘digital affordances’ which provide non-state actorswith tools to strengthen their capability to collect scientifically grounded data which pressuresnon-compliant actors towards commitments with broadly shared human rights norms.Subsequently, the methodological challenges of using open source information will bediscussed: reliability, availability, and security, as set out by Hiatt, and theadditional challenge of responsibility. In the third section, the challenges of corroborated andtriangulated open source information will be examined within the case-study of theCoalition and Russian airstrikes in Syria and Iraq. The dissertation will discuss theresults reaffirming Hiatt’s challenges within the light of human rights propagation andsocialisation. The dissertation concludes with implications drawn from the challengesidentified by the case-study when using open source evidence, but acknowledges that it is apromise too important to ignore with today’s many denied-access areas in conflict zones.
Dutch Facebook Diplomacy: An Explorative Study into the Theory and Practice of Using Facebook as a Tool of Public Diplomacy (Apr 2015)
Former Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Frans Timmermans, was dubbed the “Minister of Facebook” and his use of this social medium is in line with a broader trend at ministries of foreign affairs all around the world that use digital technology and new media to get a broad perspective on what is going on in society. What is the practicability of using Facebook if you are a diplomat? In my bachelor thesis, I examined the practicability of using Facebook as a tool of Facebook diplomacy, looking at the efforts of Dutch diplomatic missions with active presence on the social medium in specific.
Other papers for university:
- Conflict Map on the Central African Republic (Dec 2014)
- ISIS: Van waan naar werkelijkheid? (Jun 2014)
- The Visual Securitization of the Ghouta Massacre (May 2014)
- A Paradigm Shift Between the US and Iran: Change We Can Believe In? (Dec 2013)
- Immaterial Affairs: The Russian Role in the Syrian Civil War (Apr 2013)