Magnus Paulsen Hansen

I am associate professor with a long-standing interest in the politics and sociology of unemployment and the turn towards active labor market policies and workfare across the OECD countries. So far I have been working on the countries of France, Slovenia and Denmark as well as the EU focusing on various issues from expert discourses and legitimation in public debates to local practices in jobcentres and the experience of unemployment from the perspective of the unemployed. In parallel I have a keen interest in social theory and issues such as critique, power and neoliberalism.

My recent book The moral economy of activation, is a mapping of the moral ideas legitimzing activation reforms in France and Denmark since the 1990s.

Two research projects take up most of my time. In the first, EU Horizon 2020 project HECAT, (starting Feb 2020) we are going to explore the use of algorithms and artificial intelligence in labour market decicion-making in public employment services. In the second project funded by the Velux Foundations, Sabina Pultz and I are gathering data (interviews, surveys, video diaries) on the experience of unemployment in Denmark during the COVID19 pandemic.

I am the supervisor of Kristian Bloch Haug who is undertaking a PhD on artificial intelligence and profiling.