Leiden University’s ISGA research projects receive NWO Open Competition grant

A total of 21 Leiden researchers have successfully applied for the NWO SGW Open Competition XS. Two of the rewarded projects come from FGGA researchers Silvia D’Amato and Jaroslaw Kantorowicz.

With this Open Competition, NWO gives researchers the chance to start small, high-risk, innovative or promising research projects.

Borderless counterterrorism: mapping cross-border cooperation in Europe
Silvia D’Amato – Institute of Security and Global Affairs

This project compares and explains dynamics of cross-border cooperation among European actors in the field of counterterrorism (CT). Due to their asymmetric and networked nature, terrorist organizations challenge states in their ability to respond to the threat within and beyond their borders, increasing the pressure for cooperative behaviour. Cross-border security initiatives has skyrocket worldwide, granting to borders a new relevance as geo-graphical spaces for counterterrorism cooperation. Yet, no systematic data is available to analyze how cross-border cooperation works in practice. How are European actors – EU and beyond- cooperating cross-border? What practices, initiatives and measures have implemented and among who?

Unravelling the Rule of Law: A Machine Learning Approach
Jaroslaw Kantorowicz – Institute of Security and Global Affairs

There are ongoing scholarly and policy debates about what the rule of law is and was historically. This project will apply cutting-edge machine learning techniques to demonstrate how the meaning of the rule of law has changed over time and whether the understanding of this concept differs across jurisdictions. Likewise, it will provide a novel way for creating the rule of law indicators and re-evaluating existing country rankings in terms of adherence to the rule of law. The project will lead to key substantive and methodological advances in the field of law.


SSH Open Competition XS
The NWO Domain Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) has three different funding programmes in the Open Competition. There are small-scale grants, large-scale grants, and grants for ideas that hold great promise. The SSH-XS grants are available for projects with a maximum budget of 50,000 euro to enable proposals for curiosity-driven, fundamental research in the research fields covered by the NWO SSH.