What their thesis’ aimed to answer...

Raucloh’s

Rauxloh’s thesis discussed the concept of outside lobbying: trying to create a media narrative that is advantageous to the firm so that policy making ends up in the firm’s favour. It looked for the similarity between a firm’s PR efforts and their semantic similarity to media releases about such firms.

“As a masters thesis the limits are about if we can see if it is actually happening. It was as much about testing whether the method actually worked as it was about trying to establish whether outside lobbying through the media was happening. The method did work, there was a decent amount of companies that had strong links to published content.”

Terpstra’s

The general question for Terpstra’s thesis was: “Is rate-induced tipping present in pollinator communities?”

Specifically, it focused on a biological system of plants and pollinators and what happens to the survival of the species as the environment deteriorates at a fast rate. The thesis looked at tipping points in pollinator communities as an example case of rate-induced tipping points in complex systems.

While Terpstra’s thesis was quite case specific, he highlights the importance of considering tipping points for things like climate policy: “It might matter how fast you implement environmental policies. If policies are implemented very slowly, the effort might not be enough to  mitigate climate change. However, if policies are implemented very quickly, you might be able to mitigate climate change which can be seen as a positive tipping point.”

IAS, opportunity and community...

Rauxloh

Before finding IAS, Rauxloh already had a thesis supervisor ready to begin - it was her internship at POPNET that brought to her attention IAS’s thesis program. It certainly did not help that IAS is not located near the Political Sciences building at Roeterseiland.

Choosing the research masters to get into the “nitty gritty of research”, Rauxloh found the institute’s recognition of the interdisciplinary potential of political science and the social sciences appealing, as she claims they are all asking very similar questions, but might use different methodologies to answer them. Indeed, her thesis utilised methods from computer science and insights from political, social and the communication sciences.

Unfortunately Rauxloh did not spend much time at IAS, returning to Germany earlier than expected. However, for the time that she did, she really saw the value in working in an environment that provided her with a solid study location and social lunches

“You get a little bit tired of fighting for spaces when trying to study at the library, so it was nice to be able to have a working environment in the city, and the lunches are great for meeting people and sharing your work with other researchers”.

What she appreciated was getting her first glimpse at what a career in research would look like, beyond simply the research aspect: what their work structure is like, what funding processes look like, and everything in between.

What she saw at IAS made her feel more positive about working in academia, because regardless of the known competitiveness, she claims, the positive and friendly environment at IAS set a great standard for what is to come in her career.

“Make use of the fact that you have somewhere to work with access to people that are pretty excited for you to be there. Do not waste it. It’s not an opportunity anyone gets and networking is really helpful if you want to start working in academia.”

Terpstra

Before starting at IAS, Terpstra already had a thesis project and supervisor. His supervisor, Vítor V. Vasconcelos, being a IAS fellow, suggested he apply for the collaboration with IAS due to the nature of his project: ecological complex systems and tipping.

He agreed as he was interested to see what it meant to work at an interdisciplinary institute.“It was nice to work in an environment with people with similar interests, and the opportunity to meet researchers and be able to talk to them about what you are doing...which is not something you typically get during a masters thesis. You do not always have an environment with a lot of researchers doing a lot of different stuff. IAS seemed like a very nice community for that.”

Indeed, he did not expect the kind of community atmosphere that he found. He would go in twice a week, typically study isolated in the attic, and attend the daily lunches with all other fellow researchers.

There were lots of casual lunch chats about tipping points, which helps contribute to the general shaping of ideas, how to look at it all to have a more nuanced view of certain scientific techniques. Everyone’s diverse background and research methodologies kept him coming back to learn more.

“Its inspirational, and because I am new to academia, it’s nice to see how people do work and collaborate from different fields.”

How did they get here...

Rauxloh

Rauxloh has a German and English background and moved to the Netherlands for a Bachelor’s of Political Science (UvA). In 2021 she began a Political Science Research Masters (UvA).

She has now been given a PhD position at the Digital Society Observatory, Gesis - a research department part of the Liebniz Institute for the Social Sciences. She is part of a computational social science research project focusing on measuring certain relations between online behaviour and political opinions, for its effects on echo chambers, societal cohesion, political debates, and the regulation of online environments.

Terpstra

On the other hand, Terpstra grew up in Enkhuizen and studied a Bachelor in Physics & Astronomy and a MSc of Computational Sciences at UvA. His thesis supervisor was Vítor V. Vasconcelos (IAS Alumni Fellow).

He has now been given a position at the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric research Utrecht (IMAU) at Utrecht University. His PhD project is titled “Theory of coupled climate tipping elements” and is part of a larger project entitled ‘Interacting climate tipping elements: When does tipping cause tipping?’.

Beginning their new future...

Rauxloh

Rouxloh’s PhD looks at peoples behaviour online, relating it to surveys regarding their political opinions, affects toward certain groups or movements, their trust in politics, etc. This will track if and how their user behaviour of websites will affect such opinions. This is an extension of just focusing on lobbying, but it is using very similar methods and techniques to get to similar conclusions: to what degree marketed digital information by one party affects the information state of another.

“Lobbying is one of the things that irks me on a personal level, so hopefully I can someday go back to that area of research”.

Terpstra

On the other hand, Terpstra’s PhD looks at tipping elements in the climate, such as ice caps, rain forests, or ocean currents. The institute is looking at how these tipping points interact.

“Concerns are rising that several subsystems of the Earth may respond highly nonlinearly to future levels of anthropogenic forcing from greenhouse gas emissions. These levels are associated with tipping elements such as the Atlantic ocean circulation, leading to abrupt transitions. Most of these tipping elements do not stand on their own, but are dynamically coupled. In particular, this means that cascades of abrupt transitions can occur and affect the whole climate system. The mechanisms leading to such cascading behavior and particularly the physical links between tipping elements are poorly understood.”

While he did not expect this development into tipping point and climate science, he has grown an interest in its endearing complexity and presence in every day life and conversation.