International Institute of Social Studies

Part of Erasmus University Rotterdam
Group of smiling ISS students on stairs outside the building

Focus on challenges around water, agriculture and food

Reframing migrants who feed the Netherlands: Learning across the Atlantic

Paradoxically, public discourse frames the people whose work feeds the Netherlands as a nuisance. In this post, Karin Astrid Siegmann draws on lessons from US movements for migrant justice to explore how a new master frame can be constructed that recognizes migrant food workers’

Read the blog post by Dr Karin Astrid Siegmann
Migrant agrarian workers in a greenhouse

Agrifood, Water and Technologies Academic Team

Find out more about this Academic Team dealing with issues around societal challenges around water, agriculture and food.

Read more about the AWT Academic Team
Extraction pipe running through a small river surrounded by fields

Water, Securitization Anxieties and Border Imaginaries

How do ordinary people caught up in situations where water-bodies and border imaginaries are fiercely contested, make sense of their environment and exert agency to navigate and reimagine alternatives at the margins of securitized borders and accelerated environmental change?

Read more about this research project
Canoe on bank of river - WASABI project

Building urban resilience through urban agriculture?

Investigating how concrete Urban Agriculture (UA) initiatives contribute to resilience looking at initiatives such as garden associations, rooftop gardens and closed-loop agricultural production in urban areas.

Find out more about our research into urban agiculture
Urban gardener at Westerduin allotment gardens

International Centre for Frugal Innovation

(Re)designing products, services and systems at substantially lower costs and with a longer lifespan while there is no loss of functionality.

Read more about this innovative research
A farmer in Bangladesh carrying water to irrigate crops in a lush green field under a clear sky.

The paradox of pro-extraction preferences in marginalised communities: Insights from the Yasuní-ITT referendum in Ecuador

This article in Extractive Industries and Society examines the paradox of oil extraction in Ecuador - why do areas suffering the consequences of oil extraction continue to support it?
Read the full article online

Highlights

€7m grant for research into child and maternal health

ROOTS1000 investigates how interventions in the first 1000 days can be better integrated into health systems, financed and sustained

Cartoon of a woman with a child entwined as a tree trunk, leafy canopy above and exposed roots below.

Congratulations to ISS/EUR Honorary Fellow Navanethem 'Navi' Pillay on winning the Nobel Peace Prize

The award to reaffirms the importance of the international legal order

Navi Pillay on stage.

ISS Honorary Fellows

ISS has awarded a number of Honorary Fellowships to exceptional thinkers in development studies

Lucille Mair
  • PhD defence by Daniela Mora-Vera

    Daniela Mora-Vera investigates how the Solidarity Economy Ecosystem contributes to sustainable post-extractive transitions in Ecuador
    Daniela Mora-Vera
  • Symposium & Inaugural Lecture Professor Matthias Rieger

    Global Health and Development Economics Symposium, followed by Matthias Rieger’s lecture on global health behaviors and randomised trials.
    Matthias Rieger
  • Master Open Day

    Visit the Master Open Day at Erasmus University Rotterdam on Saturday 21 November 2026 and find the programme that suits you!
    Students sit in the lecture benches and listen intently.

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