Director and founder of Social Science Works is Hans Blokland. Team-members are Mirjam Neebe, Nils Wadt and Florentin Münstermann. Various interns additionally are part of our team.
Moreover, we are supported by a growing number of Fellows. Please find more about them here.
Prof. Dr. Hans Blokland
Hans Blokland is a Dutch social and political scientist and philosopher, currently living in Potsdam, Germany. He is married with four children.
In the last 20 years Hans Blokland published a large number of books and essays in the overlapping fields of social and political science and philosophy, sociology of culture, political economy, history of thought, and philosophy of science. The essays have been published in a wide variety of academic and professional journals and magazines, addressing many different publics. For his academic work, also visit his personal website. For his more recent publications for Social Science Works, click here.
Hans Blokland worked for the Dutch Ministry of Culture as a senior policymaker, and as a researcher for The Netherlands Institute for Social Research. At Erasmus University Rotterdam he held tenured positions at the departments of Sociology, Public Management, and History and Arts. He was a fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of the Arts and Sciences and held visiting positions at Yale University and Manchester University.
Between 2009 and 2015 Hans Blokland was International Professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin teaching in sociology, political science, research design and methods, and philosophy of science. In 2012 he was also appointed on the Corelio-Chair for Media and Democracy at the Free University Brussels. And in 2013 he was appointed on the Alfred Grosser-Chair in sociology of the SciencesPo in France.
A characteristic of Blokland’s work is that he seeks to bring together what erroneously has become more and more separated: social and political philosophy on the one hand, and social and political science on the other hand. This separation habitually has led to philosophies without empirical support and empirical relevance, and to sciences ignorant of fundamental social and political questions and issues, and ignorant of its own epistemological and normative assumptions. Related to this, his work is more problem-driven than has become common in social and political science and philosophy.
Consequently, both in his teachings and research Blokland has increasingly devoted attention to what Charles Lindblom called “Usable Knowledge”. Building on the growing uneasiness within the social and political sciences about the way these disciplines have developed in the last half century, he analyzes the epistemological possibilities and limits of these disciplines, and the characteristics of successful contributions or interventions of social and political science and philosophy in the public discourse and the public decision-making processes. On top of that he explores under the influence of which social and cultural factors and epistemological ideas and assumptions – implicit and explicit, conscious and unconscious – these disciplines continue to operate and develop in ways which according to many too often lead to irrelevancy and meaninglessness.
Mirjam Neebe studied sociology and philosophy at the University of Potsdam and environmental management with a focus on political science at the Free University of Berlin. Her thesis is about the hybrid ethnic identities of students belonging to the second generation of immigrants in Germany. It shows how these young people, who can be regarded as examples of successful integration, create a ‘third space’ with new ethnic identities beyond assimilation into, or demarcation from, the German culture. During her work in applied social research and development cooperation, Mirjam’s work focused on qualitative social research, the development of methodological approaches and research design, as well as project management.
Zak Reimer MA
Zak Reimer is a German Chancellor Fellow from the Humboldt Foundation conducting research into grassroots refugee integration efforts in Germany. Starting in the Autumn of 2019, for a year Zak will be a part of Social Science Works, conducting his own research as well as contributing to our projects.
Zak grew up in the state of Montana, USA and first became interested in the subject of migration after studying the issue at the US/Mexico border in 2016. In 2017, Zak began work with refugees at the newly opened office of the International Rescue Committee in Missoula, Montana. While working to help the community welcome refugees, Zak began asking the questions that led him to pursue his research in partnership with Social Science Works: chiefly, what factors strengthen the role a community plays in integrating refugees and how can successful programs in Germany be replicated in the US?
Zak holds a Bachelor of Science in psychology from Montana State University and a Masters of Social Work from the University of Montana. His other areas of research interest include childhood development, economic justice, and conflict mediation.
Nils Wadt MA
Nils Wadt is co-founder of Social Science Works. Nils finished his Bachelor degree in Sociology and Political Science in Cologne and Frankfurt. Both schools are grounded in different research traditions, Frankfurt with a strong background in Critical Theory (Horkheimer & Adorno, Frankfurter Schule) and Cologne with a strong background in empirical research and methodology (René König, Kölner Schule). Nils completed his graduate degree in Social Science at Humboldt University Berlin integrating the different academic backgrounds.
In his Master thesis Nils researched the political motivations and social values of civil volunteers in the refugee sector. His academic profile is leaning towards qualitative methods backed up by general competence in quantitative analysis. His qualitative focus covers methods such as genealogy, content analysis, as well as a variety of interview techniques and participatory observation.
Besides his studies, Nils Wadt worked at Chairs of Sociology, Political Theory, Psychology and Economics, gaining insights into the different research practices and epistemological groundings.
Within his work and studies in the academy, Nils Wadt apprehended the problems, contemporary social science is facing. This includes not only the separation between empirical research practice and the evaluation of its epistemological assumptions, but also the growing irrelevancy of academic research to civil society. His commitment to the project of Social Science Works is grounded in this apprehension.
Florentin Münstermann is a German graduate of the Erasmus School of Economics Rotterdam, currently living Potsdam. He holds a Bachelor in Economics and Business Economics, with a focus in Political Economics. Throughout his life he acquired a lot of international and multicultural experiences, which range from living a year abroad in Beijing, studying at an international school in Berlin and participating in an exchange semester at Bocconi University Milan during his bachelor studies in Rotterdam. Flo’s political interests stem from the increasingly controversial political debates and crisis around the globe. He rounded off his Bachelor with a thesis on the topic of political enfranchisement, voting behaviors of expatriate voters and their changing roles modern political campaigns. Flo is also interested in sports and music, and holds a certficate in Music Production and Sound Engineering from dBs Berlin.
Philipp studied Public Economics and sociology at the University of Potsdam, as part of a dual-subject bachelor. A wide variety of subjects were at the center of his studies, such as resource and environmental economics, organizational structures, micro economics, statistics and survey design. He is a especially interested in how the economic and ecological spheres influence each other. Also for this reason he wrote a bachelor thesis on the international protection efforts regarding the river Oder, which he approached from a game theory angle. In his spare time he enjoys art, animation, movies, cooking and baking, especially pizza.
Gabrielle Denman
Gabrielle is our intern for the Autumn of 2019. She is from Austin, Texas and is currently working to complete her undergraduate degree in Supply Chain Management at the University of Texas at Austin and has just completed a semester abroad at Copenhagen Business School. She has earned a certificate in Core Texts and Ideas, a field of study based on the analysis of the “great books” of human history, which discuss human nature, ethics, and the meaning of life from various perspectives. She is especially interested in a career working with startup NGOs which are dedicated to creating sustainable solutions to help stabilize the world’s refugee crisis and has experience volunteering with such NGOs in Europe, as well as working at a tech startup in the USA.
