People

Susanne Janssen

Leader INVENT consortium

Professor of Sociology of Media and Culture,  research director of the Department of Media and Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and founding academic director of the Erasmus Research Centre for Media, Communication and Culture (ERMeCC). Her current research focuses on the impacts of increased diversity, globalization, and digitalization in the fields of media, culture, education, and politics.

Marc Verboord

Senior researcher and co-leader WP1 and WP8

Professor of Media and Society and head of  the Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research is situated at the cross-roads of cultural sociology, media studies and communication science and addresses cultural consumption, cultural globalization, and the impact of new media on cultural evaluation.

Sylvia Holla

Postdoctoral researcher

Sylvia Holla is a postdoctoral researcher and teacher at the Department of Media and Communication at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. As a cultural sociologist she specializes in beauty, aesthetics and morality, labor conditions in creative industries, cultural globalization, gender and sexuality, and media representations.

Jordi López Sintas

Leader WP6 Unequal Cultural Opportunities

Professor in Social Sciences, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), senior researcher at CERHUM, UAB, PI of the CMC Research Group, and president of Espacual. He is interested in comparative research, social inequalities, consumption studies, leisure research, digital divide, sociology of arts, and research methodologies.

Pilar López Belbeze

Senior researcher

Associate Professor of Marketing, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She is interested in the analysis of consumer behavior, neuromarketing research, leisure and sustainable consumption. She is a member of the Board of the Spanish Association AEMARK.

Guiseppe Lamberti

Postdoctoral researcher

Statistician and data scientist currently conducting postdoctoral research at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. Holds a PhD from Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya. His research interests cover Structural Equation Models (SEM) and PLS Path Modelling, with particular attention to social inequality in the digital domain

Jinju Kim

Postdoctoral Researcher

Postdoctoral researcher at UAB. She holds a PhD in Management (UAB, Spain),  a MSc in Art Management (NEOMA Business School, France) and a BSc in Mass Communication and Journalism (Kyungpook University, South Korea). She studies new media audiences, cross-cultural consumption, SNS, big data, and natural language processing and analysis.

Joan LLonch-Andreu

Senior Researcher

Associate Professor of Marketing at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He holds a PhD in Economics and Business Administration and an MBA from IMD in Lausanne (Switzerland). His research interests are: strategic marketing, brand management, marketing in higher education, international marketing and marketing on the Internet.

Avi Astor

Senior researcher

Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and member of ISOR. He received his doctorate in Sociology from the University of Michigan in 2011. Before joining ISOR, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow with GRITIM-UPF and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University.

avi.astor@gmail.com

Oyku Hazal Aral

Postdoctoral researcher

oykuhazalaral@gmail.com

Tally Katz-Gerro

Leader WP4 Globalizing European Cultures

Sociologist of culture, consumption, environment, and inequality. Since 2017 she serves as co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Poetics. She is honorary Reader at the University of Manchester, Docent at the University of Turku, and co-coordinator of the Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative (SCORAI) in Israel.

Neta Yodovich

Postdoctoral researcher

Sociologist interested in fandom studies, popular culture, feminism and reception studies. Neta has a BA in Behavioral Sciences from Tel Aviv-Yaffo College, an MA in Sociology from Tel Aviv University and a PhD from University of Manchester. Her previous studies on have been published in journals such as Women’s Studies in Communication and European Journal of Women’s Studies.

Yeala Hazut Yanuka

PhD candidate

Practitioner in arts management and art curatorship, PhD student at the University of Haifa and lecturer at Sapir Academic College. Previously she served as Head of Arts at the British Council Israel, Director and Curator of Beit HaGefen Art Gallery-Arab Jewish Cultural center in Haifa, and Curator at the Haifa Museum of Art. She holds an Executive MPA in Administration and Public Policy and diplomas in Museology and Culture Management.

Nete Norgaard Kristensen

Leader WP5 Culture is Digital/Boundless and Danish team

Professor of Media Studies at Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, where she also serves as head of Section of Media Studies. She specializes in research about cultural journalism and cultural criticism across media. She has extensive research management experience as PI for several national and Nordic projects and networks. 

Unni From

Senior researcher

Part-time Associate Professor of Media Studies at University of Copenhagen, and Associate Professor of Media and Journalism Studies at School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, where she also serves as Deputy Head of the School. She specializes in research about cultural and lifestyle journalism and cultural criticism across media. She has extensive management experience as Director of Centre of University Studies in Journalism and as Head of Studies.

Franziska Marquart

Postdoctoral researcher

Communication scientist focusing on political communication and media effects in old and new media environments. She holds a PhD in Communication Science from the University of Vienna (Austria) and a MA from the University of Erfurt (Germany). Before joining the INVENT project, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands), where she studied the nature, composition, and consequences of citizens’ attitudes towards the EU as part of the Europinions project.

Eva Pina Myrczik

Postdoctoral researcher

Postdoctoral researcher specialized in digital cultural communication and museums, She has a PhD degree on the topic of Digital Museum Communication from the University of Copenhagen, where she also obtained her MA in Cognition and Communication. Her scholarly interests focus on the intersection of cultural practices, digital communication, and the cultural political implications thereof. She has conducted several studies (including surveys, interviews, focus groups) on the institutional use of digital technologies for cultural communication.

Semi Purhonen

Leader WP3 Mapping Diversity

Professor of Sociology at Tampere University. He is an expert in the fields of cultural sociology, consumption, lifestyles and social stratification; sociology of age, generation and social change; and comparative research and sociological theory. He has ample experience with developing and directing large-scale collaborative research projects.

Riie Heikkilä

Senior researcher

Senior Research Fellow at Tampere University and PI of the research project “Understanding Cultural Disengagement in Contemporary Finland”, funded by the Academy of Finland for 2017–2020. Her main research interests include cultural capital, cultural consumption and social stratification, and comparative sociology in general.

Ossi Sirkka

Junior researcher

Junior researcher at Tampere University. He holds an BA and MA in Sociology. Next to sociology, Sirkka has also studied also statistics and is fluent in a variety of quantitative methods in social sciences (e.g. structural equation modeling and social network analysis), statistical software (R, SPSS) and statistical programming.

Sara Sivonen

Junior researcher

Junior researcher at Tampere University. She holds an BA and MA in Sociology.  Her fields of interests include cultural capital, cultural participation, political attitudes, party affiliation and both qualitative and quantitative methods in social sciences.

Jörg Rössel

Senior researcher

Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology at the University of Zurich. His research interests include economic sociology, sociology of consumption, migration and sociological theory. His publications appeared in European Sociological Review, Journal of Consumer Culture, Poetics, Rationality and Society, and Sociological Perspectives, among others.

Sebastian Weingartner

Leader Swiss team

Post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Sociology at the University of Zurich. His research interests include cultural consumption, lifestyles, digitization, social inequality, cultural policy, and sociological theory. He has published his research in Poetics, Rationality and Society, and Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, among others.

Simon Walo

PhD candidate

Doctoral student at the Department of Sociology at the University of Zurich. His research interests include economic sociology, international comparative sociology, inequality, globalization, value change. and digital technology. His PhD thesis will investigate the effects of digital technology on labor markets.

Inga Tomić-Koludrović

Leader WP7 Decoding Culture

Full Professor and Scientific Adviser at the Institute of Social Sciences “Ivo Pilar” (Croatia). She is among the pioneers of lifestyle research in South-East Europe, and her research interests also include culture, youth, gender studies and development policies.

Mirko Petrić

Co-leader Croation team

Expert adviser at the Institute of Social Sciences “Ivo Pilar“ and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Zadar (Croatia). He specializes in cultural sociology and has worked as a researcher in several international projects (FP5, The British Council, SNFS, UNESCO IFCD).

Lynette Šikić-Mićanović

Senior researcher

Senior Scientific Associate at the Institute of Social Sciences “Ivo Pilar” (Croatia). She is a social anthropologist specializing in qualitative research methods. Her work explores the situation of women, marginalized and minority groups in urban and rural settings.

Augustin Derado

Researcher

Research assistant at the Institute of Social Sciences “Ivo Pilar” (Croatia). He specializes in qualitative interviewing and has worked as a qualitative researcher in international (Horizon 2020, SNFS Scopes) and national (Croatian Science Foundation) projects.

Željka Zdravković

Researcher

Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Zadar (Croatia) and Research Associate at the Institute of Social Sciences “Ivo Pilar”. She specializes in quantitative research methods and was responsible for data analysis in projects on youth, women, media and urban space

Dea Vidović

Director of Kultura Nova Foundation (Croatia), the largest national funding channel for the development of civil society initiatives in the field of culture. She has published widely on cultural policy and has coordinated numerous projects aimed at developing new models of cultural institutions.

Iva Žunić

Researcher

Research assistant at the Institute of Social Sciences “Ivo Pilar” (Croatia). She holds two Master’s degrees (in Sociology and Psychology), and her fields of interest include both quantitative and qualitative research methods. She is a doctoral student of development sociology at the University of Zadar.

Predrag Cvetičanin

Leader WP2 Empirical data collection

Teaches Sociology of Culture and Arts and Aesthetics at the Faculty of Arts, University of Nis and Cultural Policy and Cultural Rights at the UNESCO Chair at the University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia. His research interests are related to the emerging class structure in societies of South-East Europe, fields of cultural production and the relationship between social and cultural stratification in the SEE.

Višnja Kisić

Researcher

Assistant professor at the Faculty of Sport and Tourism in Novi Sad, Serbia. She is also a lecturer at the UNESCO Chair MA in Cultural Policy and Management at the University of Arts Belgrade, and a guest lecturer at the University Hassan II, Casablanca and University of Hildesheim. Višnja holds a BA in Art History, MA in Cultural Policy and Management, and a PhD in Heritage and Museum Studies.

Goran Tomka

Researcher

Assistant professor at the Faculty of Sport and Tourism in Novi Sad and a lecturer at the UNESCO Chair in cultural policy and management in Belgrade, Serbia. Goran holds a BA in Culture and Media Studies, MA in Cultural Policy and Management, and a PhD in Culture and Media Studies. His research interests include audience studies, new media, cultural diversity and cultural policy and management.

Danijela Gavrilović

Senior researcher

Full Professor at the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš, Serbia. She teaches Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Morals and Law Sociology, and a course on Ethnicity and Nations

Miloš Jovanović

Researcher

Assistant professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš, Serbia where he teaches such courses as Sociology of gender and sexuality, Sociology of knowledge, Sociology of science, Social construction of deviance, Media literacy, and Religion in modern society

Nemanja Krstić

Researcher

Assistant Professor at the University of Niš, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Sociology. He specializes in cultural studies in particular studies of cultural identities, symbolic boundaries, family practices and religiosity

Ratko Nikolić

Junior researcher

A sociologist of culture and politics, interested in documentary filmmaking and machine learning. Junior researcher at the Center for Empirical Cultural Studies of South-East Europe. Holds BA in Sociology and MA in Social Sciences and Computing.

ratkonikolic92@gmail.com

Frédéric Lebaron

Leader French team

Professor of Sociology at the Ecole normale supérieure Paris-Saclay, here he heads the social sciences department (economics, sociology, history). He is also a researcher at the research group “Institutions et dynamiques historiques de l’économie et de la société” (IDHES, CNRS and ENS Paris-Saclay). His main research themes are economic sociology, sociology of inequality, social sciences methodology, especially “social space” investigations. He recently co-edited Empirical Investigations of Social Space with J.Blasius, B.Le Roux and A.Schmitz (Springer, 2020).

Lucas Page Pereira

PhD candidate

Doctoral student at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin, which is an “associate-member” of the University Paris-Saclay. He is specializing in social stratification, class inequality and survey methodology in Brazil and France, under the supervision of professor Frédéric Lebaron.

Philippe Bonnet

Researcher

Statistician and social psychologist, member of the research group “Vision-Action-Cognition” (VAC) at the University of Paris and CNRS. He is currently working in collaboration with Frédéric Lebaron, Brigitte Le Roux and Johs Hjellbrekke on the sociology of lifestyles and class inequality, using applied Geometric Data Analysis methodology on various types of data such as survey data, lexical data and experimental data.