3 papers at UMAP 2026

Last week, UMAP 2026 took place in Gothenburg, Sweden.

I am delighted that three of our papers were accepted for UMAP. It is a pity that I couldn’t make it this time—so, I missed both the discussions and the opportunity to catch up with academic friends. I’m very grateful to my co-authors for presenting the work, and I am sure they did an excellent job!

The papers

• Anouk van Kasteren led and presented our work, co-authored by Marloes Vredenborg, Judit Masthoff, and me. In this paper, we identified the decision-making strategies travellers employ when choosing which alternative route to take during public transport disruptions.

• Judith Masthoff presented our research led by Marloes Vredenborg and further co-authored by Marit Bentvelzen and me. We show how situational context—particularly urgency—shapes user preferences for explanation tone.

• Robin Verachtert presented our work on news recommender diversification, co-authored by Kim Falk and me. The paper reports a large-scale comparison of three diversification methods deployed on NU.nl (a major Dutch online newspaper). It is particularly rewarding to see your research deployed in a large-scale production system and having immediate impact in the real world.