To communicate about Research in layman terms is an intention of Researchista driven by the strong believe that there is so much research-based knowledge out there that we can benefit of and we often do not, simply because.. often, research is a movie completely divorced from society.
Be it because of high level of technicalities and complexities, Research outcomes are simply difficult to transmit to the outer world.
“Will China overtake the US in the future as a hegemony?” was investigating Varnavas in his master thesis during his Masters in International Political Economy at the King’s College in London. He was so passionate about his research that in 2018 he decided to develop a board game out of it. He called it: Hegemony. As an author of a board game herself, Researchista is a big fun of such projects! Gaming in higher education is a recent trend and is increasingly keeping students in tension. Here is what you can discover about Hegemony.
Developing a game on politics, is like developing a game on taxes. Hard to put in place and even harder to penetrate the market, as just another board game. It is specific, educational and special. The risk is that it can be life-changing. Ambitious scholars and social entrepreneurs at heart like Varnavas Timotheou, a Cypriot visionary who is not easily intimidated by political quests people have on politics made a breakthrough on the board game market and in education.
His board game that is about to leave the protoype/demo phase into board game production. Would that be related to the upcoming US elections? To the corona virus effects on economy and politics? It is difficult to say. However, it is a certain fact that people want to learn more about politics.
First time, world’s largest board game fair SPIEL ESSEN2019 dedicates an entire hall to educational games.
It is difficult to not acknowledge the importance of politics and voting and Hegemony provides with answers. It teaches you from academic reliable resources about how political coalitions, clashes and thinking is formed and changes in different scenarios, how YOU as an ordinary citizen can easier and better understand politics… isn’t that a handy a game?!
Have you ever wonder how moving to a new country has inspired or made people open a new business and become an entrepreneur? Dr Nur (2015) found a direct link between immigrant entrepreneurship and success longevity in their businesses through innovation and sustainability. These successes lead to the creation of global brands, such as Heinz, Avon, Dell, Amazon, Estee Lauder and a hundred others.
Greetings from Italy!
Dr. Nur Suhaili Binti Ramli, Department of Management, University of Venice, Italy
Dr Nur informs us that despite broad discussions between immigration and entrepreneurship in United States, Australia or Canada little research is done to investigate the success rates of the immigrant entrepreneurs in the European host countries, the longevity of immigrant businesses, survival rate during crises periods or scale-up potential, and various business strategies implemented by the immigrants.
To fight the myth: “Migrants still our jobs”, on-going research question: Does the immigrant entrepreneurship positively contribute to the European countries’ socio-economic development?
For example, the recent CENSIS and collaboration with Roma-Tre University (2019) found on a growing number of immigrant entrepreneurs and a positive causal effect of immigrant entrepreneurship on the national economy in the last ten years. The findings are beneficial for the internationalisation strategy as well as for the job creation, contribution to the economic growth, and support to the local government during the economic crisis. More findings of this sort can be useful for the EU Government’s decision making in drafting policies to reduce problems within the area (part of migration issue). Therefore, Dr Nur and her collaborator Prof Finotto are interested in examining the immigrant entrepreneurship phenomenon in Europe on a comparative approach and over time and is hoped to add significant findings.
The subject of the study (immigrant entrepreneurs) has been conducted in Dr. Nur’s earlier research that summarises during the Great Depression and Second World War, immigrant entrepreneurs put more endeavour into marketing innovation, while the non-immigrant entrepreneurs (native) are more likely to improve their product through innovation, retaining the same product line and target market. Among other things, a compelling finding demonstrates that immigrant entrepreneurs started to implement market segmentation, while non-immigrant entrepreneurs ventured into vertical product differentiation, strengthened their quality with product improvement, which increased consumer trust by associating their brands with particular products. Dr. Nur (2016) emphasise that some immigrant entrepreneurs at host country are somewhat patriotic, especially when their host country is facing difficulties. For example, they show support towards local governments during these two periods by helping the US government to survive during wartime, such as more than 50% of facilities at one of an immigrant entrepreneur’s factory and laboratories were made available to the US Government for the production of war items for the armed forces. It provides historical evidence that immigrant entrepreneurship is essential and has a significant contribution to the socio-economic of the host country. Extending from this study, Dr. Nur and Prof. Finotto use a similar research framework to study the phenomenon in the European context.
Several studies on immigration and entrepreneurship between 2010 and 2018 have almost doubled, that focus mainly on the performance of the entrepreneurs and compare businesses created by native and immigrant entrepreneurs by longevity, strategy during crises periods, and by businesses that started small and later, became global brands. However, there is a limited study on the comparative approach to answer these two questions: Why immigrant entrepreneurs have different strategies to business compared to non-immigrant entrepreneurs in Europe over-time? And, How do they recognise entrepreneurial opportunity identification at the host country in Europe differently than the native?,which interest Dr Nur and Prof Finotto to scrutinise the investigation. It is an exciting work-in-progress to follow as it focuses on the European countries when the influx of migration is a critical issue. The preliminary findings from two pilot studies summarise that immigrant entrepreneurs offer job creation to the local community, establish and smoothen business entry barrier between the host and home country, contribute taxes that benefit local pensioners, and create competitive advantage. Dr. Nur and Prof. Finotto are now conducting comprehensive research to confirm the preliminary findings, which updates are available via twitter.
Furthermore, Prof William R. Kerr and Dr Sari Pekkala Kerr (2017) point out that many policymakers believe that immigrant founders were essential for the revival of the country’s growth and continued recovery from the Great Depression.In contrast, Dr Nahikari Irastorza, and Prof Iñaki Peña-Legazkue (2018) explain that the immigrant entrepreneurs are more likely to quit their businesses earlier than their native competitors. Although there are mixed findings on the business performances and strategies of immigrant entrepreneurs, in general, they can adapt and expand despite the economic crisis with several explanations including on how and why they identify entrepreneurial opportunity at host country differently than the native. In summary, the immigrant entrepreneurship phenomenon must not be excluded from local agendas and discussion, particularly in Europe. With a broad range of evidence on the subject, it concludes that this research area is critical and beneficial for shaping and improvingthe policy in the future to benefit the economy and society at large in Europe.
Current Knowledge and Challenges, 187-249. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.
Irastorza, N., & Peña-Legazkue, I. (2018). Immigrant entrepreneurship and business survival during the recession:
Evidence from a local economy. The Journal of Entrepreneurship, 27(2), 243-257.
Ramli, N.S., (2016). A comparative study of marketing strategies: the development of cosmetic brands created by diaspora entrepreneurs and non-diaspora entrepreneurs in the US cosmetic industry. [Doctoral dissertation], University of York, United Kingdom.
Ramli, N.S., (2015). Immigrant entrepreneurs on the world’s successful global brands in the cosmetic industry. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 195, 113-122
The authors are currently working on the following project:
A Comparative Study of Entrepreneurial Opportunity Identification between Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Non-Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Europe.
Thousands of PhD theses are published every month/year in the world, and thousands and even millions of public money (usually) are invested in the research projects behind the theses, yet only a very-very-very small % of the knowledge shared in these valuable books reach you :/
I started Researchista because I had a dream: I wanted Researchers to be heard and the intellectual effort to be valued. So, I made a board game out of my PhD thesis in hope to inspire other Researchers to connect to the wider audience in a different way.
Budgets on Research communication are usually scarce or most of the times non-existent, simply because after a research study was carried out, the results are used for a certain purpose by policy makers or other parties involved, often forgetting that the general public like you and me can benefit of it greatly also.
I made a game out of my PhD thesis and I hope one day it will reach you as well, online or by paper.
This is not just a game, this is a cause.
Join Researchista’s cause!
Have a look at the game, share the word, like our page on Facebook, find us on Instagram.
I will probably repeat this many times, but one of the challenges at Researchista is to keep my excitement down. Since I started this blog and our Facebook page, I met so many interesting people and the things we discuss are sometimes simply mind-blowing (bam) and this is one of these cases… So, from the left to the right we have 1 half musician/Researcher, 1 composer and 1 half Researcher/musician-amateur, who… how should I put it… joined their forces to create music out of the sounds that human body makes. Wait, what? I will stop here and let you discover this on your own…
They created “Microsonic” – an interdisciplinary project based music and on microbial communication, or shortly: music & microbes, how original is that! 😀
here is the microbe, here is the music and here is the Researcher 🙂
The story behind: Both artists and scientists seek to understand aspects of the complex world around us. Despite this common ground, artists and scientists are too often separate in their endeavors. The Academy Honours Programme for Young Artists and Scientists (Netherlands) promotes cross-disciplinary approaches and interactions. The idea is to bridge this gap by bringing together ten artists and ten scientists of diverse backgrounds where they can discuss themes, amongst which: the role of art and science in society.
It was here at this workshop back in 2015 where the three of us met. It was already late, we changed the décor in the meanwhile to a pub, when we got involved into a discussion about communication, its musical aspects and how microbial organisms (e.g. bacterias) are communicating.
source: internet
The beautiful thing about music is that it is an ultimate abstract art form that is not tied to specific images that connect easily with other disciplines from arts and science. And so, the idea to collaborate on a musical project inspired by microbial communication (aka microbes and bacterias) came into being.
source: internet
Research about microbial communication via sound signals has only received limited attention due to its technical challenges. Even though electronic devices capable of detecting sounds on microscopic length scales get more advanced every day, the technique is still in its infancy. It is already possible to hear the sound of a large group of microbes – which sounds like white noise – but the devices still need to be developed further to be able to hear the sound of single isolated microbes.Because little is known about this form of communication, Lucas saw a role for himself to play as a composer. Since the communication is inaudible for us human beings, Lucas started to explore how a musical composition out of how this microbial world could possibly sound.
“Microsonic” partition by Lucas Wiegerink
The Opinion article “When microbial conversations get physical”, Gemma Reguera discusses various forms of microbial communication, which formed the basis for the composition. It appears that the microbial microcosm is a rich sound world on its own.Reguera states that “every particle in a cell has a unique natural frequency of vibration and therefore produces a distinctive sound, very much like voice tonality and pitch in humans”.
source: internet
Sound waves are generated when objects vibrate. Experiments with yeast cells not only demonstrate that intracellular motions were sufficiently strong enough to propagate across the stiff cell wall, but that they could also generate reproducible acoustic signals.
For our project Microsonic, Lucas composed a soft musical piece, as to give the audience the feeling of a hidden sound world. The public is invited to join on a sound journey into the human body. The microbial world slowly fades into their world. A tape with real sounds stemming from the human body is added to the composition to give the translated communication of microbes a real context. The sound journey starts off with a kind of white noise – unclear, almost inaudible and a bit scratchy – and you start wondering what it is. It is the sound of blood streaming through a vein.Then the zooming starts: more and more internal body sounds are heard, including the creaking of human nerves. But also, by further zooming in you will hear the sound produced by millions and millions of microbes. There the musicians come into the picture. The playing instruments symbolize the several sound signals that microbes use to communicate. Slowly, you get introduced into their microscopic world.
source: internet
More and more pitched signals become distinguished, first only short ones, but as we zoom further, we hear longer ones as well. The microbial sound world becomes richer and richer; higher and lower pitches occur and the dynamic contrasts intensify. When listening carefully, you will hear that microbes make connections and communicate by taking over each other’s signals. So does the musicians – based on live improvisation. It is at this moment that you as human being can get a glimpse of the communication of microbes and maybe even feel part of their conversation. The composed journey ends with a collective ‘vibrational mode’, when a certain group of microbe cells are ‘in tune’.
The challenge for our composer Lucas was that he was used to thinking in terms of melodies and chords. However, microbial communication via sound signals is not a musical process – still produduces patterns and sounds. As a result, he had to change his approach to composing and relinquish control.Instead, he created a number of frameworks in which the musicians had freedom of movement and become part of the creation process. The subject of communication lends itself very well to this way of making music. The musicians improvise while listening and reacting to each other; they have to communicate to let it work.
Our project is an example of how arts and science that both have the urge to understand and express the complex external world can reinforce each other. This demands certain effort, yes, but is even more rewarding. So had our composer Lucas to let go of his usual approach towards composing. And it is exactly this that makes interdisciplinary collaboration extremely interesting – since it questions the usual approach and way of working. But there is more, interdisciplinary collaboration can support inspiration in each other’s work and reinforce the expression of the complex mechanism in our (microbial) world towards a public. All we can say, go out, open your eyes, take the risk to look outside your usual box”.
“The occult beauty of the finite is about that realisation that what is dear to us is also fleeting, and the beauty that lies in such transience. I was inspired to write this piece by the illness and passing away of my mother. As her health worsened, I became increasingly aware of the small pockets of beauty in our lives. Living under the illusion that everything lasts forever, these are easy to miss. But as one faces the loss of something precious, the world is brought into sharper focus”.
This post is dedicated to all supermen and superwomen out there that manage to combine 2 passions, at which they are both good at, in their everyday life. And this my friend, is a setar.
Music helps me to focus better. Sometimes when I don’t have motivation for work, I bring my level of concentration by bringing music. It cheers me up.
My PhD research is about the application of statistics in medicine. Last, but not least, I sing and play Iranian traditional music.
(and no, this is not a presentation for a conference 🙂 Nasser singing, Karlsruhe, Germany.
Research in music
How research helps you advance with your music? When somebody is working with traditional music, it’s important to know about the history of the instrument and culture of its country. You must know about the specifications and abilities of your instruments if you are going to play with another instruments. It helps you to know with which instrument you can combine it.
Is important to know about the structure of the music and about the instrument itself. It helps you to know more about your instrument and how to mix with other instruments. Knowing more about the history helps you more.
You are a PhD student in statistics while you play professional music, how does that work?
Every day I work till 18.00 at the university and then I go to music school and practice 1 hour singing, it takes a lot of energy but when I go out I feel re-energized. Then I go home and I practice 1 hour for my instrument.
At least 2 hours of practice for me is a kind of meditation, because all I think about are the notes, music, voice and sound. Sometimes I close my eyes, and I feel my body fully present in the music. The only thing I think about is the sound and the word I should pronounce and the lyrics that I sing. Iranian music is mixed with very old poems and which are full of spiritual concepts. When you sing these kind of poems, you without thinking go into this kind of spiritual mood and you don t think about the world that you live in.
Karlsruhe, Germany
Most of the time, Iranian music full of love stories and spiritual concepts and unconsciously when you sing these kind of things you feel it fully with your body and to really sing it best you need to understand what you sing and it helps you to go more deep into spiritual things.
This is the Research on MUSIC month and I have a great pleasure to invite Eva van Ooij, a freelance musician and researcher at Maastricht University, to tell us about her discoveries in music and law. It is more than fun than it sounds! 😉 Here she is playing her cielo
Hi!
Eva van Ooij, cellist and research fellow at ITEM/Maastricht University
Music is everywhere. We cannot escape form it. We hear it when we switch on the radio, go to a concert or watch a movie, but also when we do our groceries or are on the phone, while being forwarded to another phone. Music is and has been around always. And so are the musicians.
Source: Eva van Ooij.
Musicians travel while reaching their public, playing on a special occasion or place… This has been the case since many centuries and worked well. For example, London in the 18thCentury was a magnet for music lovers and music producers. In the opera and theatre houses many foreign musicians composed and played, while bringing their own knowledge and way of interpretation…. The same is true for Vienna, Paris, New York…. They just did it. Without any Schengen Agreement or European right to free movement of persons. Huh? Where does that pop-up from?
“Bouffon au lauth” (1623-1624) by Frans Halls, source.
Well, music and EU law have both my interests and belong to my profession. When meeting new people, it is not unusual to have a puzzling face in front of me when I say that I am a musician and researcher in EU law. Often the statement that these two disciplines are not related and have a very different approach of work follows quite soon afterwards.
There is some truth in that – at the same time not. Music is everywhere, and so is law too.My research is about the fundamental right of free movement of persons and the pattern of work of very mobile EU citizens – such as many musicians – and how this affects the social security position of this mobile worker. Tensions between laws occur in this more irregular way of working, which results often in unclear situations and an administrative hassle for the person concerned.
In this post, however, I would like to highlight another cross-over between the musical and legal world, but to do that, we need to go back in the time. Take Italy in the 17th century. This was divided among Spanish domination and governance by the pope and many small free cities in the North. The lack of political unity in Northern Italy made that there was no central organised high court of justice, neither a lawgiver who developed national law.
All rules were local or provincial subjected to the power-game of local notables, which made the legislation occasional and changeable. Still, exchange and trade went on and it where the law professors who helped out in case of misunderstandings or disputes. These learned and wise men kept this mediating and powerful position for quite a long time: till the end of the ancient regime in 1789. It was at this time that the first universities in Europe where created in Italy, which attired persons from well-off sections of the population to study Roman law in Italy.This is still noticeable today and the influence of the Roman law applied by the law professors can be traced back in the law systems of many other countries in and outside Europe.
In the same period, there were flourishing days for the arts and music in Italy. Several rulers, cities and leading families in the North were competing for prestige by the way of supporting music and the arts.This stimulated not only the occurrence of new music genres such as the opera, but also created the first classical music education system and the development of craftsmanship in high quality musical instruments – think about the ateliers of Stradivari or Amati. This made Italy having a dominant influence on the European music scenes lasting till even the mid-eighteenth century. And as everyone knows, Stradivari string instruments are still the most desired instruments of today.
Today, we know quite sophisticated legal systems that provide us the playing rules of our societies. Some rights are the same (think about universal human rights); others may differ more or differ less. A clear example here is the gay-marriage, which is totally legally here in the Netherlands, but still unthinkable in societies like, for example, Poland or Bulgaria. Different choices have been made within these societies. We may think that is caused due to a different approach to matters, to a different culture. Or maybe not?
In his book Judges, Legislators and Professors Van Caenegem opposes exactly this more traditional view that legal history is shaped by and is a part of cultural history. He proposes an interesting and bold perspective, namely: the form of the legal system with all its duties and rights, regulations and decisions is created by the political development within the various European nations.He shifts the idea that culture is at the core of how our societal structure is shaped.
But, what then about the purest expression form of our culture: the arts and music? Could we then also say that political history can be held responsible for the development of these? When having a closer look at for example the musical developments in the baroque and classical music, we can actually come to a similar conclusion. Observing both the legal and musical developments in Italy, we can say that for a long period of time, the Italian developments where progressive for their time and have been of significant influence in Europe. And indeed, it was the way of political organisation that made these developments flourishing within the domain of the arts and legal organisation. Of course, developments are not black and white. However, reflecting on the maybe bold statement of Van Caenegem and comparing this to the music historical development in the baroque/classical era, it shows us that political organisation had an enormous impact on the development of the legal order and cultural life for a long-time and with a wide geographic reach. A good reminder I would say, since it shows us how important political organization is.
source
At the time of writing of this blog it is a very topical issue. Just observe the strong reoccurrence of nationalism, terrorism and other developments, such as the upcoming Brexit, an American president that is first and foremost interested in itself and not to mention the recruitment of the Turkish minister of Dutch/German/Austrian/…..–Turkish nationals for the upcoming referendum in Turkey…. I have to admit that politics are not my domain as researcher. Yet research, particular in law and culture is built on the values of enlightenment. To defend an open, rational and democratic society is not a choice as a researcher, but a duty in itself.
I remember my dad telling me back in the days that during the Soviet Union times, for the cows to be more productive in giving milk, Mozart would be played in the background, while farmers would collect their milk. Maybe this is not the most romantic way to start this post, but if that is true, at least it gives an idea about the power of (classical) music.
Thank you, wonderful musician! This is Research on MUSIC month and invited Researchers and practitioners from this area will discuss in the upcoming Mondays different perspectives of how music affects our busy, intense, contemporary life and how we can make the best out of it!
We can create the ‘sound of music‘ ourselves anywhere we are. I remember when I turned 30 (don’t mention it)), I asked my friends to bring as a present – a performance of whatever they could do, and singing was the most used creative performance we could all enjoy that evening. Learning an instrument might take a while 😀
Going one step further than singing in the bathroom.
Speaking of that night… with gratitude to my friend Ina, who let me share this video with you, please have a look at this beautiful piece of classical music by Puccini. It is a spontaneous rendition, with the great assistance of her little blue butterfly girl, Nele.
Who knows, maybe it will inspire your next theme house party, you might be surprised on how creative your friends really are! 😉
…. and now… another round of applause go to our Special Guest of next Monday, a Research fellow on EU law and related topics to living and working as musicians and a musician at the same time! drums…
Eva van Ooij, Musician and Research Fellow at Maastricht University
It is 8th of March. I would like to dedicate this post to Kristalina Georgieva, the former Vice-President of the department that is behind financing of all EU programms that exist in the European Union (even behind Horizon2020!;), that is the: DG Budget.
They say that without political will you can not make a change in a country. I would add that without the will of policy makers (to not be confused with politicians), the change will be incomplete. Here is one way for policy makers to support Research among colleagues, see minute 7.15.
