I hold a Ph.D. in Mathematics and Natural Sciences from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. I did my first post-doc at the Department of Ecology, Physiology and Ethology , Hubert Curien Pluridisciplinary Institute, National Center for Scientific Research, CNRS at Strasbourg, France. Currently, I am a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway, and a researcher at NORCE, Kristiansand.
My field of expertise is on the development and analysis of agent-based models of social behavior, and to a lesser degree, the analysis of social networks and social behavior of group-living animals, especially primates. Given the interdisciplinary nature of my research, during my scientific career, I have worked in a range of different topics, animal behavior, animal social networks, social sciences, etc. My main interest is on the self-organization of complex social systems, how complexity at the group level may emerge from local interactions and simple heuristics at the individual level. I am particularly interested in human and non-human primates' social systems.
I am currently working on several different projects. I am part of the Religion, Ideology & Prosociality (RIP) project, working on agent-based models that aim at a better understanding of the cognitive and cultural mechanisms leading to the secularization of societies. I am also part of the Emotional Contagion: Predicting and Preventing the Spread of Misinformation, Stigma, and Fear during a Pandemic ”(EmotiCon) project and the Modeling Religious Change project.
