In this experimental paper, I will share my hypotheses for the recently commenced study on the economic activities of several Asian business communities in eighteenth-century Melaka. In recent... Show moreIn this experimental paper, I will share my hypotheses for the recently commenced study on the economic activities of several Asian business communities in eighteenth-century Melaka. In recent years Asian merchants and entrepreneurs – e.g. Chinese, Malay, Chettiar, Gujarati, Arab, Bugi, Armenian, and Jewish traders – and their relation to the Indian Ocean World have received increasing attention from scholars. These studies show that such social groups had major stakes in both regional and global trade networks, both thanks to and despite of the presence of the colonial trade companies and imperial governments. Moreover, the persistent presence and activities of such communities showcase their capacity to navigate, utilise, or evade European colonial efforts to control and monopolise commerce – offering us an insight into how such communities dealt with and lived under (or regardless of) European colonial rule. In this paper, and my project at large, I want to take a next step by considering how the activities of such trade communities collectively helped shape and transition institutions, structures, and networks on a global scale that were previously mostly accredited to Western colonialism in an Age of Revolutions – such as capitalism, modern economic, legal and bureaucratic institutions, and forced labour regimes. Through three vignettes centred around the colonial port city of Melaka (1750-1820), I explore to what extent stories extracted from colonial archives can help reconstruct such dynamic historical processes and transitions from a more diversifying perspective – moving beyond binaries like colonial/local, occidental/oriental, and western/non-western. Show less
Nguyen, T.P.; Klymenko, M.; Beane, G., Oldfield, M.; Xing, K.; Gebert, M.; Bhattacharyya, S.; ... ; Schiffrin A. 2023
Legal opinion in Case T-600/21 WS and Others v Frontex before the Court of Justice of the European Union, commissioned by the applicants' legal counsel.
Differentiated instruction concerns adapting education to students’ needs. However, relatively little is known about how students experience the degree to which their teachers fulfill their... Show moreDifferentiated instruction concerns adapting education to students’ needs. However, relatively little is known about how students experience the degree to which their teachers fulfill their individual educational needs. In the current study, the Differentiated Instruction from Students’ Perspective (DISP) questionnaire was developed and administered among 458 students of grade 4 to 6 of 22 primary school teachers in the Netherlands. The internal consistency of the DISP instrument was considered good. Students in general were moderately positive about the level of differentiation they experienced and few differences between DISP-ratings of students with varying mathematics achievement levels were identified. It is concluded that the DISP questionnaire is a suitable instrument to study students’ perspectives and can be used by researchers as well as by teachers who would like to gain insights in and improve their differentiation practice. Show less
In migration studies, the focus usually is on global South- global North movements. As South-South migration constitutes a significant part of global movement, an important part of empirical... Show moreIn migration studies, the focus usually is on global South- global North movements. As South-South migration constitutes a significant part of global movement, an important part of empirical reality remains understudied. Several scholars have asserted that this negligence in scholarly research is due to a tendency of migration scholars to follow policy developments on migration in global North countries. This paper investigates this assumption by applying a systematic literature review, which focuses on empirical studies dealing with migration in a global South country: Morocco. A hub for multiple migration flows and balancing demands coming from both its African and European neighbours, this North African kingdom forms an interesting case study for investigating whether the perspective of global North policymakers dictates the research agendas of empirical migration scholars. We argue that although the empirical literature on migration to Morocco is rich, the themes and population groups that form the core of empirical scrutiny largely follow questions of political relevance in global North countries.This working paper is part of the socio-legal research project Living on the Other Side: A Multidisciplinary Analysis of Migration and Family Law in Morocco. The project is funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) through an Innovational Research Incentives Scheme (Vidi-grant). The project is carried out at the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law & Society, Leiden Law School, NetherlandsShow less
As the field of peace history awakens to its provincializing moment, scholars are increasingly demonstrating how activists and networks from across the global South opposed war and violence... Show moreAs the field of peace history awakens to its provincializing moment, scholars are increasingly demonstrating how activists and networks from across the global South opposed war and violence throughout the latter half of the 20th century. Arguably, historians are moving beyond expressions of peace from postcolonial nations, like the idea of ‘moral violence’ by Indonesian President Sukarno at the 1955 Bandung Conference. This paper assesses the work of historians seeking to overcome Eurocentric models and chronologies of peace activism and peace movements. It has three aims. First, it briefly sketches the broader historiography of peace history by demonstrating how Eurocentric perspectives slowly give way to more global ones. I then touch upon three key aspects that global peace history historians grapple with: scale, definitions, and fault lines. Finally, I assess the potential of global peace history for the fields of global history and peace studies. I argue that peace activism in the decolonizing world cannot simply be added to ‘canons’ of peace history, nor can concepts from peace studies be bluntly applied to global peace history. Instead, definitions of and engagements with peace must be historicized and localized worldwide to build new approaches that take the global South as a starting point. Show less
Quantum-enhanced data science, also known as quantum machine learning (QML), is of growing interest as an application of near-term quantum computers. Variational QML algorithms have the potential... Show moreQuantum-enhanced data science, also known as quantum machine learning (QML), is of growing interest as an application of near-term quantum computers. Variational QML algorithms have the potential to solve practical problems on real hardware, particularly when involving quantum data. However, training these algorithms can be challenging and calls for tailored optimization procedures. Specifically, QML applications can require a large shot-count overhead due to the large datasets involved. In this work, we advocate for simultaneous random sampling over both the dataset as well as the measurement operators that define the loss function. We consider a highly general loss function that encompasses many QML applications, and we show how to construct an unbiased estimator of its gradient. This allows us to propose a shot-frugal gradient descent optimizer called Refoqus (REsource Frugal Optimizer for QUantum Stochastic gradient descent). Our numerics indicate that Refoqus can save several orders of magnitude in shot cost, even relative to optimizers that sample over measurement operators alone. Show less
Nowadays, urban-rural connections are accelerating in sub-Saharan Africa resulting in agricultural transformations, which in turn lead to the transformation of rural livelihoods. This paper... Show moreNowadays, urban-rural connections are accelerating in sub-Saharan Africa resulting in agricultural transformations, which in turn lead to the transformation of rural livelihoods. This paper examines agricultural transformations in the Dodoma Region, Tanzania, and their impact on local rural livelihoods. Triggered by transportation development and rising demand for agricultural produce on the national and international level, the transformation of rural livelihoods on the village level entails: the application of more advanced methods and organisation of agricultural production; the increased use wage-labour; considerably higher agricultural revenues; a distinct rise of livelihoods partly or exclusively based on small-scale industry, petty trade and other businesses; and a distinctively higher level of incomes and consumption. Show less
