K U Leuven’s research while affiliated with KU Leuven and other places

Intro: People with psychosis often experience social difficulties associated with psychological processes, such as fear of harm or negative evaluation from others. Virtual reality presents a unique opportunity to use social environments in therapy. This study presents a case-series of virtual-reality assisted cognitive behavioural therapy (VR-CBTp) for people with first episode psychosis (FEP) who are experiencing social difficulties. It aimed to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of this novel therapy in real-world clinical settings. Methods: Eight eligible participants were recruited and received a course of 10 sessions of individual formulation-driven VR-CBTp with a focus on improving social functioning. A novel VR environment and therapy package were piloted for the use of the assessment, formulation and treatment of social difficulties. Psychometric assessments were conducted pre-and post-therapy, and participants provided qualitative feedback about their experiences. Results: The results provided preliminary information to suggest that the therapy was feasible and acceptable, recruiting to target and with good participant retention. Pre-post comparison of treatment outcomes revealed a reliable change on some of the assessed domains, indicating participants experienced clinical benefits from the therapy.

The poor-quality jobs platform work often entails raises the question of whether and how workers can build careers within digital labour platforms. This chapter asks how far and how digital technologies used by the platform shape freelancers' experiences of precarious careers. We study two labour platforms where freelancers provide different standardised (i.e., translators and copywriters) and specialised (i.e., graphical designers, IT) services, which feature a different level of competition within the wider service market. Based on 49 interviews with freelancers we argue that how platforms organize the transaction and the provision of services through digital technologies affects the freelancers' career progression by portfolios building and the capacity to set prices. Yet, while platforms make organizational choices and implement 'self-regulation', these choices are also influenced by the external conditions of competition in the wider service market.

This encyclopaedia of one of the major fields of language studies is a continuously updated source of state-of-the-art information for anyone interested in language use. The IPrA Handbook of Pragmatics provides easy access – for scholars with widely divergent backgrounds but with convergent interests in the use and functioning of language – to the different topics, traditions and methods which together make up the field of pragmatics, broadly conceived as the cognitive, social and cultural study of language and communication, i.e. the science of language use. The Handbook of Pragmatics is a unique reference work for researchers, which has been expanded and updated continuously with annual installments since 1995. Also available as Online Resource: https://benjamins.com/online/hop

Digital platforms provide many workers with vital income and offer the promise of flexible work, and yet also contribute to experiences of precariousness and exploitation, particularly with regard to pressures to undertake unpaid work. This article explores why unpaid labour is necessary and what drives its extent and form among diverse types of digital platforms. We theorize two ideal types of 'open' and 'closed' socio-technical platform regimes of worker autonomy, building on sociological insights about socio-technical systems, management control over worker autonomy and labour market segmentation by skill. In principle, 'open' ('closed') platform regimes grant relatively high (low) worker autonomy in terms of access to the platform, paid work and control over work tasks. Analysing five case studies, illustrative of 'open' and 'closed' regimes, we 2 Human Relations 00(0) investigate unpaid labour in low-skill locational (i.e. food delivery) platforms and medium/ high-skill online (i.e. freelancing) platforms. In brief, digital freelancers exhibit a lower extent of unpaid labour within relatively 'open' regimes, owing to greater autonomy over access to, and control over, platform work in a sector requiring medium/high skills. Conversely, 'closed' regimes mitigate unpaid labour for food-delivery platforms by providing market shelter for workers, who are easily replaced in an overcrowded sector requiring few skills.

Figure 1. Demonstration of the inherent ambiguity in the task of neural inverse rendering. Training an inverse rendering algorithm like NMF [18] on the same object under different illuminations yields varying material properties that subsequently impact relighting tasks. Abstract Inverse rendering aims to reconstruct the scene properties of objects solely from multiview images. However, it is an ill-posed problem prone to producing ambiguous estimations deviating from physically accurate representations. In this paper, we utilize Neural Microfacet Fields (NMF), a state-of-the-art neural inverse rendering method to illustrate the inherent ambiguity. We propose an evaluation framework to assess the degree of compensation or interaction between the estimated scene properties, aiming to explore the mechanisms behind this ill-posed problem and potential mitigation strategies. Specifically, we introduce artificial perturbations to one scene property and examine how adjusting another property can compensate for these perturbations. To facilitate such experiments, we introduce a disentangled NMF where material properties are independent. The experimental findings underscore the intrinsic ambiguity present in neural inverse rendering and highlight the importance of providing additional guidance through geometry, material, and illumination priors.

Research on platform work has primarily focused on analyzing how algorith-mic management influences working conditions by empowering platforms to govern digitally-delivered services. However, prior research has overlooked the crucial aspect of how algorithmic management underlies platforms' use of diverse contractual forms of employment available in the labor markets from where they source their workforces. Bridging this gap is vital to understanding how labor platforms integrate algorithm management, which employs digitally programmed procedures for coordinating and governing labor input, with various contractual employment structures influenced by regulations and collective actors such as trade unions. Coined as algorithm governance, this phenomenon represents the fusion of algorithm management with contractual employment frameworks, emanating from labor market regulations and policies. This essay pioneers the concept of algorithm governance, illuminating its ontological capacity to enrich debates on algorithm management. Algorithm governance thus explains how algorithm management intricately shapes working conditions by influencing the use of diverse contractual employment forms within the labor market. KEYWORDS algorithmic management platform regulation platform work labor and industrial relations

Case study written and presented for the Global Region Forum 2024, organised by KU Leuven Campus Brussel (June 2024).