I am an affiliated researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies, where I work with Pontus Strimling, Malcolm Fairbrother and Kimmo Eriksson on the Formas-funded project Finding popular solutions to climate change. Through a global survey covering 138 countries, we are trying to understand which climate policies people support, and why.
My research sits at the intersection of environmental politics, political sociology and fiscal sociology, with a particular interest in public opinion and political economy. A recurring question in my work is what makes climate policy politically possible. I have long been interested in carbon taxation, both in why some countries adopt carbon taxes while others don’t, and in why proposals fail even where support seems strong. This has led me to study how political institutions shape tax policy, how campaigns and advertising influence voters, and how people weigh costs against fairness when judging a policy. Alongside this, I am interested in public attitudes toward progressive taxation, perceptions of political corruption, and what the political center actually means to voters.
I am a postdoctoral fellow in public policy in the Department of Sociology at Colby College in Maine, USA. I hold a PhD in sociology from the University of Washington and a BA in business and economics from North Park University. Before my academic career, I worked for several years in the financial industry in Chicago.
