The PhDs in the Humanities programme serves to boost the influx and advancement of young talent in the humanities. The programme is funded by the Deans’ Consultative Committee for Literature and the Humanities of the SSH Council and the NWO Social Sciences and Humanities domain.
A multimodal approach to emotional language processing in real-world multilingual speech
Applicant: dr. Susanne Brouwer
Candidate: M.W.J.M. Vermeer
Words like ‘war’ evoke weaker emotions when read in a second language than in the native language. But how intense is our emotional response when we hear emotional words in real-world, noisy situations? Do listeners interpret the emotional message similarly when the language spoken is less proficient, or when there is background noise? Do they still rely on words, or more on their conversation partner’s facial expressions? This project investigates how listeners understand emotional meaning in spoken language and how facial expressions support emotional understanding when language is less reliable in multilingual, real-world communication, thereby promoting effective communication.
Burnt But Not Lost. New Carbonised Papyri from Thmouis and the Administration of Roman Egypt’s Delta
Applicant: dr. Mark de Kreij
Candidate: J. Alexander
Egypt’s dry climate preserved thousands of papyri, offering unique insights into Roman provincial administration -except in the humid and densely populated Nile Delta, where moisture destroyed nearly all records. Around 200 CE, an accidental fire carbonised a small group of documents from Thmouis, which survived despite the conditions. Excavated over a century ago, new technologies have recently allowed these carbonised fragments to be conserved. These papyri shed new light on local administrative practices. They tell us about this understudied region and its people, and also about those who created and saved these records for posterity.
The Molecularisation of Biology and its Philosophical Riddles: A Historico-Philosophical Examination
Applicant: prof. dr. Christoph Lüthy
Candidate: Mila Burger
Today's medical and biological sciences have been shaped in the mid-twentieth century, during the molecular revolution. Ever since, scientists explain biological phenomena like illness and evolution by investigating the underlying molecular mechanisms. But can one reduce these phenomena to molecular processes? And is there still any room in these determined chains of molecular interactions for chance or randomness? This project investigates molecular biology from historical and philosophical perspectives and its conceptual tensions and tries to bring light into these tensions.
Beyond the Hard Problem: consciousness, function, and life
Applicant: prof. dr. Marc Slors
Candidate: J.O. Ossebaard
The advent of modern artificial intelligence has raised difficult questions regarding whether such systems could become conscious. The study of consciousness is dominated by the so-called “hard problem”: how and why does consciousness sometimes accompany brain processes? This project develops a critique of “the hard problem” from an “enactive” perspective. Enactivists argue that “the hard problem” has derailed the debate by focusing only on the brain, as the key to consciousness lies in understanding its fundamental relation to biological life. If the enactivists are right, then only biological life, and not systems such as ChatGPT, can develop consciousness.