Social science perspectives on climate change and development

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The 3rd General Assembly of the ISABEL Horizon in Katowice (march 2026)

Last week I was in Katowice for a meeting of the Horizon-funded ISABEL Horizon project, where we explored the impacts of the green transition on job destruction and job creation, especially in regions historically shaped by coal industries.

What struck me most was the diversity of the consortium. It brings together people from fields such as IT, economics, geography, and sociology, and spans countries across Europe—North and South, East and West, both within and beyond the EU. In other words, it is a complex consortium, and complexity inevitably brings challenges.

But if reality itself is complex—and it clearly is—why should our research projects, or the ways we approach them, be any different?

After many years of working in multidisciplinary environments, one thing has become increasingly clear to me: interdisciplinarity is not easy. Our starting points, epistemologies, axiologies, and ontologies can differ profoundly. And yet, I am more convinced than ever that this is the direction we need to pursue.

There is, of course, great value in disciplinary spaces where methods and concepts can be deepened and refined. But that should not replace the need to design projects that push us beyond our comfort zones—projects that challenge us to collaboratively formulate the kinds of research questions our times demand from science.

On another note, I also felt grateful for the opportunity to visit coal mining communities in the region, a place I had long wanted to see. Bytom, north of Katowice, stands out as a striking example of where technology, mining heritage, the history of wars, state formation, ethnolinguistic divides, and communities navigating transition all intersect.

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Kick-Off Meeting of the ISABEL Project (and return to KU) (January 2025)

Im excited to announced the Kick-Off Meeting of the ISABEL Project. The event brought together our esteemed partners from across Europe to discuss strategies for tackling the challenges of job creation and destruction during the green transition. Using cutting-edge AI tools and regional insights, ISABEL aims to promote fair reskilling, upskilling, and labour market policies that ensure no one is left behind.

I will be working in this project as researcher and responsible for ethical issues. This project also means to become assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen, after four years in Warsaw.

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My trip to South Africa

This summer I attended a Symposium on Mining, Community, and Closure in Africa at the University of the Free State inBloemfontein, South Africa, where I had the honor of participating as a keynote speaker. Together with Professor Lochner Marais, we had the opportunity to visit numerous places and meet many people working in the field of development. I return with a deep sense of learning and understanding of the main challenges this country faces, especially with regard to mine closure.
In the photo, our fantastic fieldwork team—Kristof, Monica (University of Alberta, Canada), and Lochner—in Jaggerfontein, a place of great symbolic significance where, exactly one year ago, an ecological disaster destroyed entire homes due to the collapse of waste from a diamond mine. Another special moment was the photo with the head of the Department of Sociology, Professor Sethulego Matebesi, with the iconic façade of the university’s main building in the background.
I was also honored to be invited to participate on a committee evaluating doctoral thesis proposals. I leave with the hope of returning and continuing to collaborate with many of the people I had the opportunity to meet (september 2024)

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I participated in the 5th China-EU International Forum on Clean Energy Transition, held in Warsaw and organized by Agora Energy Transition China together with Agora Energiewende and other partners. The forum focused on strengthening regional and multilateral cooperation on clean energy transition and just transition in coal-dependent regions, bringing together experts and practitioners from China, Europe and beyond to share case studies, policy insights and pathways for collaboration. (June 2025)

This summer I attended the Field School in Ethnographic Methods at the Comitas Institute for Anthropological Study, New York, USA. (Photo taken at Teachers College, Columbia University). (July 2024)

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This week we were visited by Professor Lochner Marais from the University of the Free State in South Africa, and co-author of the book we recently published (Resource Communities). We spoke about natural resource extraction, housing, and social well-being in South Africa, a country I plan to visit in the near future. We also had the opportunity to visit the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, located 40 km north of Copenhagen, taking advantage of the fact that there was an exhibition by the South African artist William Kentridge entitled The Refusal of Time. (June 2024)

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With Eduardo Gudynas in Copenhagen

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Seminar on the use of satellite imagery for social data science at Warsaw University (2022)

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I am thrilled to announce that I have started a new position at as assistant professor at the department of political economy at the Faculty of Economics, University of Warsaw. I will still keep my affiliation with the University of Copenhagen. Here I will be continue my research on the validation of satellite imagery data for social measurements. The idea is to create a proxy of inequality that will then allow me to better understand the economic dynamics at the very local level. In the photo, in one of my first events at the Faculty. Specifically, in the 17th EU-REAL Meeting “Regional and Urban Economic Modelling” organised by University of Warsaw Faculty of Economic Sciences and The European Union Regional Economics Applications Laboratory — a dynamic exchange on urban economic modelling, spatial methods, migration and regional labour markets. (2022)

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Fieldwork in Colombia

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Gdańsk, Poland — teaching the sociology of space to architecture students at the Gdańsk University of Technology, combined with a field visit to the former shipyards and the old town (2017/2018)

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