PLANET-NL Featured in "Faces of IAS" & "The Edge of Knowing"
- planetnlorg
- Jun 3
- 2 min read
We are excited to share that the work of PLANET-NL and insights from our very own Eelke Heemskerk have been featured in the Institute for Advanced Study of the University of Amsterdam's book, The Edge of Knowing: Curiosity, Complexity and Collaboration at the Institute for Advanced Study of the University of Amsterdam by Huub Dijstelbloem and Sanne Bloemink (Eds).
This celebration of a decade of excellent research at IAS captures the vibrant spirit of community, research, and future-oriented thinking that defines the institute. In the linked video, "Faces of IAS", we share the experiences from several members of the IAS community and people interviewed in the book.
Here's a sneak peek at an excerpt from Eelke's interview in The Edge of Knowing:
‘NETWORK ANALYSIS IS NOT JUST A METHOD; IT IS ALSO A THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE. IT IS A WAY OF LOOKING AT REALITY.’
In 2019, Heemskerk joined the board of associates of the IAS, which consist of representatives of all seven faculties of the UvA, and his group was allocated one day per week there. Before that, a collaboration with Leiden University and the Central Agency for Statistics (CBS) had already been established, eventually leading to POPNET, a research platform for population-scale social network analysis.
"That actually stemmed from the IAS," says Heemskerk. He describes the collaboration with CBS as ‘highly unique,’ particularly the specific partnership the IAS developed. "There had been previous efforts to identify researchers within the university working with CBS data. But that never materialised into a solid group that could work together. People were working on their own projects with their own data, and that’s fine. It simply shows that collaboration doesn’t just happen automatically."
Securing funding for this collaboration was no small feat, Heemskerk recalls. Just one day before they were supposed to submit their proposal, a technical misunderstanding made it suddenly impossible to file. Acting quickly, they coordinated with all involved parties, especially the IAS. They split and redistributed the funding requests and managed to submit them to different sources within a day, thus successfully securing the necessary funding. True academic entrepreneurship in action.
Heemskerk: "If you bring together people with the same open mindset and let them talk and explore possibilities, new ideas will almost naturally emerge. They will figure out what to do with these ideas and see where they lead. And in my view, that’s what scientific progress is all about – constantly pushing a step further."
Check out the rest of Eelke's interview, along with interviews from other IAS researchers, in The Edge of Knowing. The book is available under open access.
