~ Victor

I am an Associate Professor (UHD) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU), where I co-lead the User-Centric Data Science group of the Computer Science department. I am also a co-director of the Cultural AI Lab. In my research, I combine (Semantic) Web technologies with Human-Computer Interaction, Knowledge Representation and Information Extraction to tackle research challenges in various domains. These include Cultural Heritage, Digital Humanities and ICT for Development (ICT4D). I am currently involved in the following research projects:

For other and older research projects, see the “research” tab.

HUMAIN project secures Horizon Europe funding

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We’re happy to share that the project HUMAIN has been successfully funded under Horizon Europe. HUMAIN focuses on the ethical and human-centric adoption of Artificial Intelligence in mission-driven sectors that are vital to society: Culture, Education and Open Science. The project responds to the rapid uptake of AI—from generative tools in the creative industries to AI-supported teaching and scholarly publishing—and addresses the need for data-informed guidelines and regulatory frameworks that align AI innovation with public values and societal missions.

The User Centric Data Science group at VU will contribute to the project by analysing the use and impact of AI in the cultural heritage and creative sector, helping ensure that AI applications support inclusive, responsible, and human-centered practices

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Matching B Corporations via a Hybrid Information Retrieval Framework

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[This post is based on Yitong Tang‘s Master Information Science thesis, conducted in an internship project with 2CoolMonkeys B.V]

In her master’s thesis, Yitong Tang presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of a hybrid information retrieval system that integrates structured filtering with LLMs to enhance partner matching within the B Corporations ecosystem. B Corporations are companies that have undergone verification to meet high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. As value-driven business networks continue to grow, organizations increasingly face the challenge of identifying suitable strategic partners within vast, unstructured datasets.

This thesis introduces a partner-matching system built on a hybrid information retrieval framework. Following a Design Science Research methodology, she iteratively developed and refined the system across four prototypes. The final architecture combines the efficiency of a traditional search engine (Elasticsearch) for structured data filtering with the deep semantic capabilities of an advanced LLM used to interpret unstructured text, such as company descriptions and mission statements.

Screenshot of the recommender system (see demonstration on youtube).

To evaluate the system, she employed a mixed-methods approach that included quantitative performance metrics—precision, recall, and response time—as well as qualitative interviews with B Corp stakeholders. The findings show that the final hybrid model significantly outperforms baseline approaches, offering more accurate, contextually relevant, and well-reasoned recommendations. Its strengths are particularly evident in interpreting complex natural-language queries and incorporating geographical constraints.

Overall, this research contributes a validated and transferable blueprint for developing intelligent partner-matching systems within private or domain-specific knowledge bases. It demonstrates that combining traditional search technologies with modern LLMs provides a powerful approach for transforming raw organizational data into meaningful and actionable partnership opportunities—an approach with broad potential for mission-driven and complex business networks.

The thesis can be found below. A demonstration video can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcowqxA41p4

Master_IS_Research_Thesis__Yitong-TangDownload

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Capturing Polyvocality of Cultural Heritage Events Through Crowdsourcing

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[This post is based on Mohamad Fernanda‘s Master Information Science thesis]

Cultural heritage event annotation often lacks diverse perspectives, resulting in incomplete or biased historical records. Master Information Science student Mohamad Fernanda’s research addresses that gap by examining how crowdsourcing can support polyvocality—bringing a broader range of viewpoints into the annotation process. His central research question is: How can annotations for cultural heritage events be sourced effectively and ethically to achieve polyvocality?

To explore this, he conducted a study in which he:

  1. gathered qualitative survey responses from 22 participants across three groups with different cultural backgrounds: a) native Dutch individuals, b) native Indonesians, and c) people of Dutch-Indonesian heritage;
  2. investigated how Large Language Models can recognize and synthesize polyvocal data.

The findings show that crowdsourcing can successfully capture multiple perspectives, resulting in a richer and more nuanced historical narrative. While LLMs offer promising support for analyzing such data, their use demands careful oversight and ethical consideration. Overall, this study demonstrates that a collaborative, ethically informed approach—combining crowdsourcing with LLM assistance—can help produce more balanced and representative accounts of cultural history.

The figure below shows the results of the coding done by the LLM of choice (Gemini 2.0 Flash). It recognizes five themes in the participants responses on questions about the representation of colonialism in Dutch museums:

Figure from Fernanda (2025)

The thesis, including the exact surveys and prompts used can be found below

Master-IS-Research-Thesis_Mohamad-FernandaDownload

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Unfinished pasts exhibition

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Output of scientific projects come in many forms: papers, talks, posters, datasets etc. But one of the wonderful things about the Pressing Matter project is that one of the types of output is especially spectacular: an exhibition in Amsterdam’s Wereldmuseum. The exhibition “Unfinished Pasts” brings together the questions and results of our scientific research as well as the results of the provenance research into the various collections associated with the project. The amazing results of the Pressing Matter Artist in Residence project are also displayed, as are the discussions with the project’s so-called critial friends. Through these lenses, the exhibition looks at the question of restitution and repair: should museums return collections to their countries of origin? How did these colonial objects end up in their collections? And who do they actually belong to? 

The exhibition colofon
A small part of the exhibition: the result of an Indonesian art collective

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Building Smarter: Designing Dashboards for Energy Management

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[This post is based on Givannah Noor‘s Master Information Science Thesis]
Dashboards are essential for data-driven decisions, but effective design, especially for smart building and energy management, is often overlooked. Givannah Noor’s thesis, “Brick by Brick: A Human-Centered Approach to Effective Dashboard Design for Smart Building and Energy Management,” tackles this gap head-on.

At Arnhems Buiten, an IoT pilot site and part of the HEDGE-IoT project, a specialized dashboard was developed to monitor various devices. Givannah took a human-centered approach, conducting stakeholder interviews to uncover pain points and key needs. These insights informed the development of a high-fidelity prototype. To that end, she conducted several interviews with stakeholders, developed personas, scenarios and prototypes.

The overview page in the hi-fi prototype
The insights page in the hi-fi prototype

The prototype was then evaluated with stakeholders using a think-aloud technique. The findings revealed that effective dashboard design goes beyond typical UI/UX principles, emphasizing the crucial role of storytelling and designing for predictive analytics. This research offers valuable insights for creating dashboards that truly meet the complex needs of smart building and energy management, and improve how we visualize future trends.

Master_Thesis_Givannah_Noor_VU_compressedDownload

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UI for Polyvocal Provenance Reporting

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[This post is based on Bella Abelardo‘s Master Information Science thesis, “Designing a User Interface for Provenance Reporting of Objects with Colonial Heritage”]

Bella’s thesis addresses a critical challenge in cultural institutions: representing multiple perspectives for colonial heritage items. Current systems often create a “singular truth” in provenance reports, and unstructured data hinders discoverability.

Bella’s goal was to create a user interface to help provenance researchers holistically document the “polyvocal knowledge” often present in colonial heritage objects. Her research intended to explore improvements to the popular TMS content management system. To this end, she conducted interviews with various domain experts to gather design requirements and built a prototype, CultureSource.

two figures showing the lo-fi design of the improved user interface (imgs: B. Abelardo)

The evaluation showed CultureSource’s potential to help researchers document multiple perspectives. Bella’s research provides key requirements—standardization, multiple perspectives, usability, and data management—for future user interfaces aimed at documenting complex, multi-layered histories.

Final_Designing_a_User_Interface_for_Provenance_Reporting_of_Objects_with_Colonial_HeritageDownload

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Unlocking Smarter Customs: using Linked Data in Container Tracking

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[This post is based on Auke Hofman’s Master Information Science thesis].
The Dutch Customs Administration handles an immense volume of data daily, primarily for risk assessment and critical safety, health, economy, and environment (VGEM) tasks. However, as Auke Hofman highlights in his Master Information Science thesis, “Opportunities and Challenges for Linked Data at Customs Administration of The Netherlands,” the current focus on declaration data, rather than real-time container events, creates a significant bottleneck, limiting transparency and effectiveness.

Auke’s research dives deep into how Customs can dramatically improve its risk assessment by shifting its attention to these crucial events. His main objective was to explore the opportunities and challenges of using Linked Data to enhance local container tracking. By integrating diverse data sources through Linked Data principles, he aimed to provide a more holistic view.

His methodology employed the Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM), iteratively developing and evaluating a Container Tracking System. He prioritized key requirements using the MoSCoW method, ensuring that the most pressing needs were addressed first. The evaluation itself was framed around user stories, offering practical use cases and demonstrating the system’s potential. Auke built a prototype featuring two knowledge graphs with visualizations, data analysis capabilities, and a notification system. One graph was manually created, while the other leveraged the FEDeRATED prototype, a system designed for real-time data exchange between stakeholders. The evaluation successfully demonstrated the prototype’s ability to retrieve data from the FEDeRATED knowledge graph and apply complex business rules. While some user interface features were deprioritized, the focus shifted to incorporating machine learning algorithms and providing architectural views, illustrating how this innovative prototype could be seamlessly integrated into Customs’ existing infrastructure.

Visualisation of the hand-constructed ontology

In conclusion, Auke Hofman’s thesis showcases, in a test environment, that Customs can significantly enrich container data by integrating it with other datasets using Linked Data principles. This not only allows for the application of sophisticated business rules but also paves the way for AI/ML-powered risk assessment capabilities such as anomaly detection and pattern extraction. His work emphasizes the transformative potential of Linked Data, while also acknowledging the essential need for manual effort in semantic data alignment before fully leveraging industry standards like FEDeRATED. This research marks a significant step towards a more intelligent and efficient Customs operation.

His thesis can be found below.

Final_MSc_IS_Thesis_Jhn638___final-1Download

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Nice news from ESWC

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That’s nice! Thanks for the acknowledgement chairs!

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Exploring AI with Communities in Kuching, Sarawak

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From April 7th to 12th, 2025, I had the pleasure of visiting Kuching, Sarawak, alongside my colleague Lea Krause and Master’s student Eva Heemskerk from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. This visit, made possible through our long-standing collaboration with UNIMAS, was a vibrant mix of education, cultural exchange, and engaging discussions on the future of AI in society. dr. Cheah Wai Shiang, Associate Professor at UNIMAS was again our main point of contact for engaging with various communities.

We kicked off our trip at SMK Agama Tun Ahmad Zaidi, where Lea introduced Form 3 students to the fascinating world of Natural Language Processing and Large Language Models using Hugging Face tools. The students experimented with sentiment analysis and chatbots—many for the first time.

Lea Krause assisting students with LLMs (photo by Celine Haren and Cheah Wai Shiang)

Later that day, I delivered a lecture at UNIMAS on “Knowledge Graphs for Cultural AI,” emphasizing how cultural context can shape ethical and inclusive AI systems. During the trip, we also managed to do some data gathering about colonial cultural heritage, by presenting participants with objects from the Sarawak region and asking their perspective on objects. This is done in the context of our HAICu project.

At Sarawak Skills, I presented on embedding AI into technical and vocational education, followed by a thoughtful roundtable on how educators can guide students to use (Hybrid) AI critically.

The discussion panel at Sarawak Skills (photo: Celine Haren and Cheah Wai Shiang)

On our final day, we visited SK Muhibbah, a rural primary school, where we shared stories about the Netherlands and engaged with young students whose curiosity and enthusiasm reminded us of AI’s potential to reach and inspire across all communities.

The three of us with school teachers and ms. Nurfauza, dr. Cheah and Celine

That afternoon, we also met with the minister of Education and the director of the new Sarawak AI institute to explore possible cooperation between VU, UNIMAS and the institute.

This visit was a truly enriching experience, made possible by the ERASMUS+ funding scheme. We very much look forward to deepening our collaborations in the region.

Visiting the Muhibah village

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Unlocking the Future: how unified IoT Communication transforms Smart Device Data into valuable information – The OfficeGraph resource

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Unlocking the Future: how unified IoT Communication transforms Smart Device Data into valuable information – The OfficeGraph resource
As VU participants in the HEDGE-IoT project, we wrote a blog post detailing the OfficeGraph knowledge graph. You can ready it on the project website.

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