Research Projects⌗

SCOOP: Sustainable Cooperation Program⌗

I am a PhD researcher in the SCOOP (Sustainable Cooperation Program), a transdisciplinary research and training centre studying how to make society more resilient through sustainable cooperation.

Research Focus: Within the SCOOP program, I work on the project “Identities and Networks: Social Mechanisms Linking Group Identities, Social Network Structures, and Sustainable Cooperation”. This research investigates how identities, social network structures, group norms + expectations and the platforms that these operate on shape cooperation and conflict in various online and offline communities. Recently, the focus is on online political discussion groups, with a focus on Habermasian deliberation and civil disagreement in toxic political spaces.

About SCOOP: SCOOP is a consortium of researchers from five Dutch universities (University of Groningen, Utrecht University, VU Amsterdam, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Radboud University Nijmegen) dedicated to understanding sustainable cooperation across multiple domains: Care, Inclusion, and Work. Since 2017, SCOOP has been investigating the theoretical and practical foundations of cooperation resilience, addressing how societies can maintain high levels of care, work, and inclusion despite changing circumstances.

The program operates through four multidisciplinary work packages and maintains an open-access research data infrastructure to advance transdisciplinary collaboration in cooperation studies. SCOOP’s expanded successor program, SOCION, continues this research with a focus on social cohesion.

Key Resources:

Academic Activities & Service⌗

Managing Editor, Rationality and Society Journal⌗

I serve as Managing Editor of Rationality and Society, an international peer-reviewed journal published by SAGE. In this role, I:

  • Serve as the first point of contact for manuscript submissions
  • Coordinate the editorial review process
  • Organize and oversee quarterly issue publication

Rationality and Society is a leading venue for research at the intersection of sociology, economics, philosophy, and psychology, publishing cutting-edge scholarship on rational choice theory, game theory, institutional analysis, and behavioral economics.

Secretary, Norms and Networks Cluster (2022–2026)⌗

I served as Secretary of the Norms and Networks Cluster (NNC), a research cluster based at the University of Groningen that studies social phenomena including segregation, opinion polarization, and cooperation through mathematical modeling, game-theoretic analysis, and computer simulations.

Responsibilities included:

  • Organizing weekly seminars and research presentations
  • Coordinating cluster activities and facilitating collaboration among members
  • Managing cluster communications and logistics

The NNC brings together researchers interested in understanding classical sociological phenomena through formal modeling and computational approaches, bridging traditional sociology with quantitative methods.

Research Interests⌗

My research integrates computational social science, online political communication, and platform governance. I am particularly interested in:

  • How social network structures and group identities shape cooperation and conflict
  • Mechanisms of toxic escalation and de-escalation in online political discourse
  • Platform design and its effects on democratic deliberation
  • Agent-based modelling approaches to understanding online behavior
  • Computational methods for studying digital trace data