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On 21 August 2026, Desu Lusambya successfully defended his PhD defence investigating how aid organizations provide space to communities affected by humanitarian actions so that their voices are heard and considered in decisions that affect them.

What does it really cost to do good? The Good Humanitarian, the podcast collaboration from The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre (HSC) and the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), is back for a second season. This time, co-hosts Tom Ansell (HSC Coordinator) and Sarah Njoroge (ISS Communication Officer) are exploring The Cost of Doing Good. The series is produced by Gabriela Anderson (HSC Community and Project Manager) and Saleem Salameh (Writer and producer).

Dr Jeff Handmaker, Associate Professor of Sociology at ISS, ISS MA student Osama Al Shamleh and Emmylou Savage, a bachelors student at Maastricht University College, discuss how they experienced the recent escalations of violence in Israel, Palestine and broader region. Osama Al Shamleh (OAS): The reaction was shock on the morning of 7 October, but then a very quick feeling of grief for all the scenarios that I and those close to me were imagining the response would be.

Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia has awarded Emeritus Professor Mohamed Salih a special recognition for his contribution to the university. Emeritus Professor Mohamed Salih at Bahir Dar University In its announcement of the special recognition, Bahir Dar mentioned Professor Salih's exceptional contributions to the university through his teaching, research, doctoral supervision, academic mentorship and international collaboration.

We tend to view a financial crisis as something negative. It is often accompanied by uncertainty, rising unemployment and falling house prices. But according to Professor of Economics Irene van Staveren, there are also positive aspects to such a crisis. What began with a bank failing in the United States ended up on our doorstep here in the Netherlands, with far-reaching consequences during the 2008 credit crisis.

Erasmus University Rotterdam became an OpenAIRE member. Erasmus University Library submitted the application on behalf of the university. OpenAIRE (Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe)  is a technical infrastructure that harvests research output and provides over 15 services related to publishing, infrastructure building, and monitoring open science.

In his new article published in Disasters, Dr Rodrigo Mena explores how the humanitarian–development–peace (HDP) nexus (also known as the triple nexus) is implemented on the ground. Mena argues that effective practice is not about finding a single model of operation, but rather emerges through negotiation across organizational mandates, contextual realities and the trade-offs that shape humanitarian, development and peace interventions.

Dr Jeff Handmaker and Professor Sindiso Mnisi have published a special issue of the South African Journal on Human Rights on language-related systemic inequalities in South Africa. The publication is largely published on an Open Access basis. Each article is written partly in several of South Africa’s indigenous languages, followed by an English-language translation and analysis.

Professor Linnet Taylor has been appointed as Chair in Global Digital Politics at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) by the Executive Board of Erasmus University. She will start this new role in September 2026. Linnet Taylor, currently professor in International Data Governance at Tilburg University, is the recipient of a €2 million ERC Consolidator Grant for her research project PublicLab: Improving governance of digital experiments.

Dr Karin Astrid Siegmann has been awarded an Impact Explorer grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) for her project 'Transforming understandings of transactional sex in humanitarian contexts, and reforming institutional responses towards affected populations: the case of Venezuelan migrants and internally displaced populations in Bogotá and Cúcuta, Colombia' Transactional sex – the exchange of sex for money, goods, services or privileges – is a critical yet underrecognized livelihood...