Research

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.

Recently, I have completed (as workpackage leader) the Horizon 2020 project HECAT, (2020-2023) in which we developed and explored instruments based on algorithms and artificial intelligence in labour market decicion-making in public employment services.

Currently, I am the co-principal investigator (w. Sabina Pultz) of the INDIGMA project funded by the Velux foundations that explores the expriences of (in)dignity of unemployment people living in de-industrialised areas (in the US, Denmark and France). Here I supervise two PhD students - Maggie Müller and Mark Connaughton

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