Ny adjunkt

Hi everyone!

I started as an assistant professor in the political sociology section this August. I’ve just returned from the US, where I was a postdoc in sociology at Yale. I did my PhD at the department a couple of years ago, so it’s wonderful being back home!

My work focuses on the cultural dimensions of liberal democracies. I’m especially interested in how critique and conflict are ascribed meaning in the US and the UK. I’ve just finished data collection for a mixed methods study of how US citizens reason about the democratic role of activists. I’m also mid-way through a project on different forms of truth-telling in democracy, where I compare how journalists and activists imagine what it means to ‘speak truth to power.’ The assumption underpinning my theoretical and empirical work is that democracy is not just a set of procedures but also a way of life characterised by an openness to conflict and critique.

Outside of work, I love to go hiking and read fiction. If you want to have a chat about democracy, meaning-centred political science, social theory, or why Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea books are better than Harry Potter, my door is always open (1332-214).