I’m an Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science at Duke Kunshan University.

My ongoing research agenda (Google Scholar) focuses on democratic challenges and innovations. I study whether citizen assemblies can help inform and influence the wider electorate; the causes and effects of emotions in politics; democratic and civic participation; ideology and issue polarization; and the causes of populism. I use various methods and data in my research, both quantitative and qualitative.

Broader topics of interest include motivated reasoning, inter-group conflict, persuasion, emotions, norms, social identity, public opinion formation, deliberation, alienation, and social cohesion.

My work has been published in journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, Political Behavior, Sociological Science, and Political Psychology.

I have a diploma in teaching and lead a lab on pedagogical research and practice at the Institute for Global Higher Education (at Duke Kunshan University). My courses cover social theory, methods, and how individual behavior is constrained and enabled by norms, institutions, processes, and identities. In these courses I train students to critique and evaluate current research. To better understand the reliability of studies I help students think through the relationship between theory, evidence, and methods.

I hail from a rock in the middle of the North Atlantic called Iceland. In previous lives I was a team leader at government agency, radio producer and presenter, founder of a non-partisan think-tank, in addition to working with kids and grown-ups with disabilities or drug problems.