I am a computational sociologist interested in cooperation in modern work teams and the diffusion of ideas in historical societies. Using a complex systems perspective, I unite these research lines by studying how local human interactions give rise to global group phenomena.
In work teams, my aim is to understand fair, productive, and sustainable cooperation through the spontaneous emergence of roles, such as the 'innovator' or the 'moderator'. Focusing on teams of software developers, I study how these roles emerge from the code co-editing patterns of developers. My research is integrated within the SCOOP project (Sustainable COOPeration) where I collaborate with Rafael Wittek (Groningen) and Vincent Buskens (Utrecht).
On a societal level, I aim to understand why ideas evolve and spread in certain patterns. Using data on letter correspondences of scholars from 16th-century Europe, I focus on societal transitions during the Reformation, such as changes in theological doctrine and governance practices. By collaborating with researchers from historiography, theology, and linguistics, I address complex challenges in the study of historical ideas, such as multilingual and extinct language communication and semantic shifts.
I apply research designs and analytical tools from various disciplines including field studies and behavioral experiments, social network analysis, spatio-temporal modeling, and causal inference methods