Over the last year, handshakes have been replaced by fist or elbow bumps as a greeting. It shows that age-old social conventions can not only change, but do so suddenly. But how does this happen? Robotic engineers and marketing scientists from the University of Groningen joined forces to study this phenomenon, combining online experiments and...
Culture
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Success of Megamusicals Makes Space for Innovation
Megamusicals have often been criticised in the academic world and in the media for their homogenizing tendencies, but increasing academic attention on them is providing us with new insights. In her inaugural lecture at the University of Amsterdam, professor by special appointment of the Musical Millie Taylor will outline the impact of megamusicals on local...
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Taxing Bachelors and Proposing Marriage Lotteries – How Superpowers Addressed Declining Birthrates in the Past
There’s growing awareness – and concern – about declining birthrates in the U.S. and other countries around the world. Falling birth rates are usually seen as a sign of societal decline, a nation’s diminishing power, and the eclipse of marriage and family values. Rarely are they put into any kind of historical context. But birthrates...
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The Women Who Appear in Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ Are Finally Getting Their Due, 700 Years Later
When Dante Alighieri died 700 years ago, on Sept. 14, 1321, he had just put his final flourishes on the “Divine Comedy,” a monumental poem that would inspire readers for centuries. The “Divine Comedy” follows the journey of a pilgrim across the three realms of the Christian afterlife – hell, purgatory and paradise. There, he...
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Football Without the Fans: New Study Reveals Effect of Empty Stadiums During Pandemic
Playing professional football games in empty stadiums had a hugely negative effect on the success of home teams, with home advantage almost halved, new research shows. Home advantage describes the benefit a sports team playing at their own venue is said to enjoy over the visiting team. This could be attributed to the effect of...
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Germany Is Returning Nigeria’s Looted Benin Bronzes: Why It’s Not Nearly Enough
After years of pressure, Germany recently announced that an agreement had been reached to return hundreds of priceless artefacts and artworks that had been looted from Nigeria in colonial times and were on display in German museums. Commonly called the Benin Bronzes, these beautiful and technically remarkable artworks have come to symbolise the broader restitution...
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How Do Leaders and Influencers Emerge?
We think of leaders and influencers as imbued with special skills and qualities – either innate or hard-won merit – that propels them to success, high status and financial rewards. Self-help books on how to build leadership skills abound. However, new research that models the evolution of social networks suggests it is less about individual skills and...
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New York City’s Hidden Old-Growth Forests
In the popular imagination, New York City is a mass of soaring steel-frame skyscrapers. But many of the city’s 1 million buildings are not that modern. Behind their brick-and-mortar facades, its numerous 19th- and early 20th-century warehouses, commercial buildings and row homes are framed with massive wooden joists and beams. These structures probably harbor at...
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For Some Craft Beer Drinkers, Less Can Mean More
My prepandemic summers were always packed with travel – trips to Europe for work and play, and, most recently, a road trip across the American West. At the end of a sweltering day of activities, I’d routinely wind down with some social drinking. In recent years, though, I started to notice a shift. Beer lists...
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Calls to Cancel Chaucer Ignore His Defense of Women and the Innocent – and Assume All His Characters’ Opinions Are His
Spying is a risky profession. For the 14th-century English undercover agent-turned-poet Geoffrey Chaucer, the dangers – at least to his reputation – continue to surface centuries after his death. In his July 2021 essay for the Times Literary Supplement, A.S.G. Edwards, professor of medieval manuscripts at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, laments the...
