A resilient society has the ability to prevent, mitigate, and recover from societal disruption. It can respond flexibly to military threats, geopolitical shifts, information campaigns, increasing polarization, digital insecurity, trade conflicts, threats to the rule of law, pandemics, or other crises. Moreover, a resilient society is capable of innovation, enabling it to better address future threats.
In the Netherlands, we face the challenge of safeguarding and strengthening this societal resilience. This can only be achieved if enhancing resilience is seen as an integral task, taking into account both Dutch vulnerabilities and strengths. The Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) domain brings together ethical, computational, legal, cultural, religious, philosophical, economic, historical, behavioral, and social perspectives to address this complex and societal issue.
In doing so, the SSH-domain focuses particularly on six dimensions of resilience, as outlined in this memo (in Dutch).
Building resilience
Resilience is a broad concept and can be divided into several dimensions.
Research themes include:
- Scarcity and distribution issues and the effects of choices on vital processes and the provision of primary needs;
- Issues surrounding disinformation and crisis communication;
- Economic and social aspects of the recruitment and deployment of reservists;
- Use of social networks and increasing citizen participation and resilience;
- Legal and ethical aspects of cooperation between humans and (dual-use) technology.
- Maintaining Dutch democracy, the rule of law and democratic values.
Impactful initiatives
The SSH-domain provides research projects, publications, ecosystems and companies that work on this. Examples include:
Through its research, the SSH-domain protects democracy and the values of our society. Structural investments can perpetuate and strengthen the impact of the SSH-domain. The SSH-council is in dialogue with relevant partners about this shared mission.