Public Science

It is clear to me that without publicly available and accessible science, and participation of the public in science, we remain closed to the full potential of science to inform and transform human society. Although my research takes place primarily in science, I try to participate in (social) media, public scientific information development, teaching others to promote public science, and writing for more general audiences. 

Social Inequality

I was recently invited to an elite institute for the promotion of research on the public and public opinion in Chile. Here I had the opportunity to engage with academics, policymakers and public elites to discuss the role of redistributive policy and public opinion (in Spanish).

Following this theme of inequality and redistribution, we also conducted research as fast as possible at the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic to determine how social inequality might magnify the perception of pandemic-based risks among the public.

Many of my courses in sociology and political science contain the theme of social inequality. Here I produced a video for Bachelor students to use as an example of how one might do a 'good' presentation in one of their courses. The topic is social inequality. 

Immigration and Social Policy

Inter-group dynamics is a focus of my research. Immigration is a recurring, pertinent topic in societies across the globe. Fears of immigration, refugees, increasing economic-immigration, demographic transition and increasing age-dependency-ratios and populism are perpetually relevant in modern societies. 

I experienced the Migration Crisis of the 2010s first hand in Germany. It shifted quickly from an open-door attitude ('Wir schaffen das') to a radical shift to a more nativist and anti-immigrant public sphere. Two striking developments during this time were the Monday demonstrations, where people got together and chanted 'Wir sind das Folk' ('we are the people') which is a saying taken from the times when the Nazis took over Germany, and the first time since the Nazis that an anti-immigrant populist party got into the Government with more than 5% of the vote. I wrote a blog for the London School of Economics EUROPP about the economic importance of immigrants during this time. This was based on a data and predictive modelling, suggesting that the share of anti-immigrant parties in Europe is likely to increase. The title was "Europe’s ageing societies require immigration to survive – and that means anti-immigration politics is here to stay" and the predictions are displayed below in red (apologies, this was before I started making all visualizations color-blind friendly).

I worked on an important study with Maureen A. Eger trying to answer the question of how immigration might reduce support for social policies that provided social welfare and insurance. Although this work is largely academic, I made a podcast to summarize our findings and some work in this area to make the research more accessible to a public audience. 

Teaching to Empower Public Science

In a recent open science course, I had the students 'make a contribution' instead of a final test or paper that probably only I would read. I described this in a blog post:

"Teaching to empower students as public, open and citizen scientists"

In my teaching I advocate editing Wikipedia. My students have worked on diverse Wikipedia projects. I myself try to edit Wikipedia and advocate for Wikipedia editing as an altmetric for hiring committees. 

Below my Wikipedia stats.

Crowdid - A Blog about Inequality, Social Science and Open and Meta-Science