My work at the moment revolves around two interconnected interests.
One is research, by which I mean that I study, think about, collaborate and publish on the social phenomena that interest me and for which I believe to be important.
My main research project at the moment deals with the history of comparing universities across countries (with a focus on information and data infrastructures enabling them).
The research I do is primarily qualitative, usually case-oriented, and focuses on tracing and accounting for change in history. This allows me to study a phenomenon in-depth, while drawing on diverse empirical methods and material, including documents, interviews, archives, and observations.
The other interest is writing. I am especially interested in what is conventionally known as “academic writing,” although I prefer to think of it as writing about complex things that is meant to be understood by a range of audiences, from highly specialized expert ones to lay.
I think of writing as a craft. As a non-native English speaker in an environment in which reading, speaking, and writing in English is a matter of professional survival, I have always been acutely interested in what it meant to put thoughts into written words. But also the other way round: how our reading and writing choices and habits shape our thinking.
To date, I have organized and co-organized writing workshops for early-career scholars, curated web pages with resources on academic writing, and helped dozens of BA, MA, and PhD students make their academic writing clearer, more effective, and nicer to read.