The African Studies Centre Leiden celebrated its 75th anniversary at Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden on 8 September 2022. It was a festive day with colleagues, students, alumni, and societal partners.... Show moreThe African Studies Centre Leiden celebrated its 75th anniversary at Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden on 8 September 2022. It was a festive day with colleagues, students, alumni, and societal partners. This ASCL Occasional Publication presents the keynote speeches of the day, giving insight into the Centre’s rich past and present research, education, library and societal activities. In addition, it is illustrated with many pictures of the day and showcases the ASCL Library’s special items from the collection that were exhibited. Show less
The Russia-Ukraine war is a multifaceted beast. It ranges from fighting on the ground to high diplomacy, from domestic anti-war protests to international weapon supplies, from justification through... Show moreThe Russia-Ukraine war is a multifaceted beast. It ranges from fighting on the ground to high diplomacy, from domestic anti-war protests to international weapon supplies, from justification through sham referenda to coercion via economic sabotage, and from operational misdirection to covering up war crimes. There are close connections between these facets: the collapse of a front leads to the discovery of mass graves; the delivery of weapon systems depends on Zelensky’s appeal to the international community; sham referenda followed by annexation enable accusations of unwillingly mobilized soldiers who refuse to defend the motherland. The volume sheds light on the Russia-Ukraine war, exploring this multitude of facets and their interconnections. Bringing together the expertise of our colleagues at the Netherlands Defense Academy (NLDA) allows us to adopt a distinctively interdisciplinary approach, offering uniquely comprehensive and timely reflections on this armed conflict. The 27 chapters in this volume are centered around five themes. The first section covers historical and contemporary narratives, intelligence, digital technologies, and communication strategies. The second provides in depth analyses of the operational aspects of the war, including warfighting on land, at sea, in the air, as well as in the space and cyber domains. The third section on international involvement covers topics such as sanctions, burden sharing, arms support and implications of the war on international institutions and the world order. The fourth provides analyses of the normative framework that applies to the Russia-Ukraine war. Finally, the fifth section deals with the way armed forces can transform their organizations and learn from this war, and concludes with questions on how and when the Russia-Ukriane war might end. Show less
Archaeology has gone digital for some time now! Topics such as GIS databases, 3D models, drone photography, meta- and para-data, semantic mapping, text mining, simulation, and social network... Show moreArchaeology has gone digital for some time now! Topics such as GIS databases, 3D models, drone photography, meta- and para-data, semantic mapping, text mining, simulation, and social network analysis have become commonplace in archaeological discourse and practice. Digital and technological advancements seemingly offer limitless promises for data recording, analysis and dissemination. Yet, after several decades of innovation, we must ask ourselves which of these promises are actually fulfilled, and which persistent impasses are present. Today, some reflexive questions are more important than ever. In particular, when, how and why do our innovative archaeology tools fail? Do we approach our archaeological projects with a digital wand and (implicitly or explicitly) expect a magical solution? And when there is indeed a digital solution, at what expense does it come?In this volume, scholars and practitioners in the field discuss the state of the art, as well as the promises and impasses that digital approaches to archaeology entail. The authors discuss the current state of teaching digital archaeology, the societal impact of digital innovations, current issues in archaeological data management, promises and limitations of isotopic research and remote sensing techniques, and why subfields such as agent-based modelling and serious gaming struggle to keep momentum. Show less
Plundering and taking home precious objects from a defeated enemy was a widespread activity in the Greek and Hellenistic-Roman world. In this volume literary critics, historians and archaeologists... Show morePlundering and taking home precious objects from a defeated enemy was a widespread activity in the Greek and Hellenistic-Roman world. In this volume literary critics, historians and archaeologists join forces in investigating this phenomenon in terms of appropriation and cultural change. In-depth interpretations of famous ancient spoliations, like that of the Greeks after Plataea or the Romans after the capture of Jerusalem, reveal a fascinating paradox: while the material record shows an eager incorporation of new objects, the texts display abhorrence of the negative effects they were thought to bring along. As this volume demonstrates, both reactions testify to the crucial innovative impact objects from abroad may have. Show less
Krause, J.; Masullo Jimenez, J.; Paddon, E.; Welsh, J. 2023
Welcome to the Proceedings of the 12th Conference on Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization (EMO), held in Leiden, The Netherlands, March 20–24, 2023 in hybrid format.Why hold EMO conferences?...Show moreWelcome to the Proceedings of the 12th Conference on Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization (EMO), held in Leiden, The Netherlands, March 20–24, 2023 in hybrid format.Why hold EMO conferences? This question was discussed at EMO 2007 by its founders. The doubts regarding the viability of the conferences were fortunately cast away as the importance, need, and ubiquity of multi-criterion optimization keeps growing each year at a tremendous pace, impacting other areas and being influenced itself by them.For millennia optimization (improving things) has played a crucial role for humans. In more recent times, EMO (and optimization in general) has become important in sciencein areas such as physics, biology, economics, social sciences,medical sciences, and mathematics. For instance, Snell’s law was discovered by Willebrord Snellius through experimentation, only later it was realized that it can be derived from Fermat’s principle of least time, stating that light always chooses the path that is traveled in the least time.As such, the laws of nature can often be perceived as a process of optimization and optimal decision-making. Secondly, another use of optimization is the following. Many insights can be gained by looking at extremal objects (for instance, given 2n points in the plane no three of which lie on a line, n of them blue and n of them red, it is always possible to create n line segments by using the given points such that the endpoints have different colors and no two segments intersect – this can be understood by looking at the appropriate extremal object). Thirdly, methodologies and techniques developed in the EMO community have been empowering many practical scenarios: from finding the best taxation system, the best returns on investments while avoiding too high risks,discovering potent drug candidates with few side effects, to designing engineering structures that optimally balance the energy consumption and the environmental impact (e.g., minimizing the CO2 or CH4 emission).In the EMO conferences, we focus mainly on the evolutionary approaches to solving multi-criterion optimization and decision-making problems since the applicability of analytical/deterministic methods is often limited. For the scenarios where both categories of approaches are applicable, the hybridizations of analytical and evolutionary algorithms have appeared over the years, combining the strengths of both categories.Such hybridizations were also covered in the EMO conferences. In recent years, the EMOcommunity has been bridged with theMulti-Criterion Decision-Making (MCDM) community, which focuses more on the decision-making aspects of the same problem. According to the EMO tradition, also in this year’s event, many works are dedicated to designing and studying algorithms, ranging from novel algorithmic operators to thetheoretical analysis of existing ones. Notably, there are some contributions that connect EMO with Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence, which draws more and more research interests nowadays. Also, appropriate attention – also as a tutorial – is paid tobenchmarking and empirical performance assessment, for instance, new benchmarking vi Preface problem sets. Furthermore, some submissions address real-world problems using EMO methodologies, which nicely complete the scope of the conference.Show less
