International Institute of Social Studies (ISS)

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Nederland
The Hague
International Institute of Social Studies (ISS)

Educating future leaders in development & delivering innovative research in response to societal needs.

ISS, part of Erasmus University Rotterdam, offers an MA in Development Studies and a PhD programme.

16/09/2026

🔊 Episode #5 of our new season of 'The Good Humanitarian' podcast in collaboration with The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre is available to listen to!

You’ve probably heard of the Geneva Conventions: laws meant to govern war, protect civilians and shield doctors, journalists and aid workers. These and other laws are also meant to make sure that when the worst crimes happen, someone is held responsible. But what happens when those laws are ignored, delayed or applied selectively?

In this episode, we are asking why accountability matters, how international laws and treaties are converted into action and what it really means for civilians and aid workers when justice is postponed, denied or never comes at all?

💬 Guests Thandiwe Matthews, PhD (University of the Witwatersrand) and Gabrielė Chlevickaitė (T.M.C. Asser Instituut) join us for the fifth episode: 'The International Criminal Court is waiting for you'. The guests and co-hosts guide us through the debate on the cost of doing nothing.

We would also like to know from you, our listeners: What makes a 'good' humanitarian? Leave a comment below or on our podcasting channels.

Co-hosts: Thomas Ansell and Sarah Njoroge
Production: Saleem Salameh and Gabriela Anderson

🎧 You can listen to episode 5 on:
🔗 Apple Podcasts: edu.nl/g3ux9
🔗 Spotify: edu.nl/3e34d

15/09/2026

🧩 What makes resistance endure?

Some social movements flare up and disappear. Others survive for years, or even decades, changing shape as the world around them changes. So what keeps people resisting?

Join us again in The Ontology Lab, a new podcast hosted by the Crisis, Politics and Law Academic Team at ISS. On the International Day of Democracy, we’re thinking about democracy beyond the ballot box and about the people who keep organizing, resisting and pushing for change.

In Episode 3, ISS Associate Professor Karim Knio is joined by PhD researcher Margaux Schulz to explore one of France’s longest-running social movements: the struggle around Notre-Dame-des-Landes and the Zone to Defend (ZAD).

Beginning in the 1970s with opposition to plans for a new airport, the movement grew, transformed and persisted. Even when the airport project was abandoned in 2018, the movement did not simply disappear. Why?

From occupation as a form of resistance to the ways tactics and struggles travel across movements, Karim and Margaux turn to Spinoza and critical realism to ask what enables collective resistance not simply to survive but to persevere.

Get your headphones – we’re making room for complexity.

🎧 Listen to Episode 3 of The Ontology Lab:
Spotify: https://edu.nl/gqg3d
YouTube: https://edu.nl/vacre

Photo: Léodras / Wikimedia Commons

10/09/2026

🧩 Can inclusion reproduce exclusion?

Put on your headphones as we explore the next puzzle in the new podcast, The Ontology Lab, hosted by the Crisis, Politics and Law Academic Team at ISS.

In Episode 2, ISS Associate Professor Karim Knio is joined by University of Amsterdam PhD researcher Daniel Zach Sloman to explore a curious contradiction at the heart of inclusive governance.

Governments and institutions have spent decades trying to make governance more inclusive. Yet inequality and exclusion persist. Sometimes, Zach argues, the very mechanisms designed to include people can produce new barriers, a phenomenon known as adverse inclusion.

But before we can decide whether something is inclusive or exclusionary, there’s a more fundamental question to wrestle with: what do inclusion and exclusion actually mean?

🎧 Find out by listening to episode 2:
Spotify: https://edu.nl/q6r4v
YouTube: https://edu.nl/ktxxf

09/09/2026

🔊 Episode #4 of our new season of 'The Good Humanitarian' podcast in collaboration with The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre is available to listen to!

Join us for this second season as we explore 'The Cost of Doing Good'.

When a disaster hits, the priorities are immediate: save lives - deliver aid - respond as quickly as possible. But what happens after that first phase begins to fade? When the emergency response slows down and the much longer process of rebuilding begins? Rebuilding is not just about repairing what was destroyed; it’s about deciding what comes next. What gets rebuilt first, what gets left behind and who gets to make those decisions?

Guests Mohammad Kanfash (Utrecht University and UNHCR) and ISS Associate Professor Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits lead this conversation in the fourth episode: 'How and what do we rebuild after a disaster?'. Join us as we dive into the cost of reconstruction and rehabilitation.

We would also like to know from you, our listeners: What makes a 'good' humanitarian? Leave a comment below or on our podcasting channels.

Co-hosts: Thomas Ansell and Sarah Njoroge
Production: Saleem Salameh and Gabriela Anderson

🎧 You can listen to episode 4 on:
🔗 Apple Podcasts: edu.nl/4x9b8
🔗 Spotify: edu.nl/pyc9g

08/09/2026

🧩 Can inclusion reproduce exclusion?

Put on your headphones as we explore the next puzzle in the new podcast, The Ontology Lab, hosted by the Crisis, Politics and Law Academic Team at ISS.

In Episode 2, ISS Associate Professor Karim Knio is joined by University of Amsterdam PhD researcher Daniel Zach Sloman to explore a curious contradiction at the heart of inclusive governance.

Governments and institutions have spent decades trying to make governance more inclusive. Yet inequality and exclusion persist. Sometimes, Zach argues, the very mechanisms designed to include people can produce new barriers, a phenomenon known as adverse inclusion.

But before we can decide whether something is inclusive or exclusionary, there’s a more fundamental question to wrestle with: what do inclusion and exclusion actually mean?

🎧 Listen to our second episode now:
Spotify: https://edu.nl/bqpgr
YouTube: https://edu.nl/ck6vd

07/09/2026

👋 Join us in welcoming the 2026-2027 batch to ISS!

Our Orientation Week has concluded and a new academic year has begun. This year, particularly, brings some exciting first to celebrate.

📕 Our students are the first to embark on our renewed one-year MA in Development Studies programme, starting an intensive year of learning, exchange and growth at ISS.

📗 We’re also thrilled to welcome the first cohort of Societies in Crisis: Humanitarian Action and Policy Responses, our new MSc programme offered jointly with The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre and Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences (ESSB). The programme brings together perspectives from across disciplines to explore how societies experience and respond to crises.

📘 We also welcome our new Erasmus Mundus Masters Program in Public Policy - Mundus MAPP students, beginning the first year of their two-year international journey in public policy here at ISS.

With 23 nationalities represented across our new cohort of students, we’re looking forward to the perspectives, conversations and connections they will bring to our community.

Here’s to a year of learning, new experiences and making The Hague feel like home!

02/09/2026

🔊 Episode #2 of our new season of 'The Good Humanitarian' podcast in collaboration with The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre is available to listen to!

When disaster strikes, it can feel sudden. An earthquake. A flood. A toxic spill. A famine. But while hazards may arrive quickly, disasters are rarely as sudden as they seem.

The scale and intensity of a disaster are shaped long before the event itself, often by political decisions as much as anything else. So what does it actually mean to be vulnerable? And can disasters actually be prevented, or rather, prepared for?

Professor in Humanitarian Studies at ISS and Director of The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre, Thea Hilhorst joins us for the third episode: 'What’s ‘vulnerability’? And what are we vulnerable to?'. This episode will discuss the cost of not preventing.

We would also like to know from you, our listeners: What makes a 'good' humanitarian? Leave a comment below or on our podcasting channels.

Co-hosts: Thomas Ansell and Sarah Njoroge
Production: Saleem Salameh and Gabriela Anderson

🎧 You can listen to episode 3 on:
🔗 Apple Podcasts: edu.nl/9wp74
🔗 Spotify: edu.nl/bkjm3

01/09/2026

🧩 Why do inequalities persist despite decades of education reform?

Put on your headphones or turn up your speakers. We’re making room for complexity.

Welcome to The Ontology Lab, a new podcast from ISS, hosted by the Crisis, Politics and Law Academic Team. This is a show where big ideas meet real-world puzzles.

In our first episode, ISS Associate Professor Karim Knio is joined by Dr Juan D Parra to ask a deceptively simple question: why and how do education systems change?

Starting with persistent educational inequalities in Colombia, their conversation moves from the concrete to the abstract and back again. What can social ontology reveal that conventional explanations cannot?

So settle in, get comfortable, and join us for The Education System Fights Back, the first episode of The Ontology Lab.

🎧 Listen to our first episode now:
Spotify: https://edu.nl/vntuv
YouTube: https://edu.nl/bj4kp

28/08/2026

👋 Hey, new batch! We’re excited to meet you next week.

Check out our welcome message from our staff! 🫶

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27/08/2026

🔎 War, climate change, migration, democratic backsliding and AI can look like very different challenges.

But what if understanding what is happening isn’t enough?

At the 2026 Annual Conference of the International Association for Critical Realism, hosted at ISS, researchers asked what happens when we look beneath the events we can see – towards the structures, power relations and conditions that produce and sustain them.

From climate vulnerability to political economy, the conference explored a deceptively simple question: Are we responding to the symptoms of today’s crises, or understanding what keeps producing them?

Get ready: that conversation is also continuing beyond the conference with The Ontology Lab, a new ISS podcast exploring critical realism, ontology and the forces shaping our world, releasing next week on 1 September.

🔗 Read the conference recap to explore what critical realism can bring to some of today’s challenges: edu.nl/tyxmr

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Kortenaerkade 12
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2518AX

Website

http://www.iss.nl/

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