I hold a doctoral degree from the University of Zurich in Political Science and am currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Modelling in Manchester. My research encompasses a variety of areas, such as Central Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, social complexity and emergence and political power, but I mainly focus my undertakings on the study of contemporary conflicts and related phenomena by means of evidence-driven agent-based social simulation. A result of this research interest is my collaboration with Scott Moss in an ongoing interdisciplinary project on power structures and conflict in Afghanistan.

The computational socio-scientific study of social conflict is of such immanent importance to me that I decided together with Nanda Wijermans (University of Groningen) to found the Special Interest Group on Social Conflict and Social Simulation (SIG-SCSS) within ESSA. A recent offspring of this successful project is the creation of ESSA’s, NACSOOS’ and PAAA’s Special Interest Group on Modelling Conflict, of which I am also a founding member. However, I am concomitantly a staunch believer of the fact that social simulation’s faith should not be decided in splendid isolation. Social simulation should be rather seen as an effective and important complementary approach to orthodox methodological approaches, whether they are qualitative or quantitative in nature. Hence, I promote agent-based social simulation’s usefulness – and epistemological and methodological beauty – in a variety of other professional associations, such as the British International Studies Association (BISA) and the International Studies Association (ISA).

To help strengthening these cross-disciplinary ties and to further promote the field of social simulation beyond its own limits in the name of ESSA would be an honour for me.

A more complete overview of my research and myself is obtainable from my website and in particular from my curriculum vitae.