Christiaan Monden
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cmonden.bsky.social
Christiaan Monden
@cmonden.bsky.social
2.4K followers 1K following 130 posts
Sociology & Demography, and some (a lot) active travel | Family, Health, Mortality, Social Inequalities | Migrant worker at the University of Oxford | UK NL LV
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cmonden.bsky.social
Christiaan Monden @cmonden.bsky.social · 28d
What a wonderful book! If you read just one book in 2026, please consider this briliant one by @drkatemarvel.bsky.social. Rich, wise, challenging, moving, funny - all at the same time. Whatever you think, feel or know about climate change & science, it won't disappoint. bookshop.org/p/books/huma...
Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet
Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet
bookshop.org
cmonden.bsky.social
Huge thanks to Patrick Präg @ppraeg.bsky.social, Evelyn Ersanilli, and Alexi Gugushvili @a-gugushvili.bsky.social for their outstanding service to European #sociology.

What a difference their leadership at European Societies has made!
doi.org/10.1162/EUSO...
ppraeg.bsky.social Patrick Präg @ppraeg.bsky.social · 1d
An era has come to an end
As we write our final editorial for European Societies, we return to the spirit of our first editorial (Präg, Ersanilli and Gugushvili, 2022) and to the question that guided our tenure: did we deliver on what we promised? At the outset, we set out a twofold vision. We wanted to keep European Societies a genuinely general sociology journal with a focus on Europe and European sociology, open to all substantive areas and to authors worldwide. At the same time, we wanted to modernize the journal by lowering barriers to participation, moving toward open access and open science, and by running peer review as fairly, comprehensively, and efficiently as possible. Looking back, we believe the direction of travel has been consistent with that agenda, even if some constraints have become more pronounced as submissions have grown. The most tangible step toward barrier reduction has been the shift in the journal's publishing model. The move to MIT Press and the adoption of a noncommercial, diamond open-access model have made the journal free to read and free to publish in. This has mattered not only as an institutional achievement by ESA, but also as a signal of what a flagship journal of the European Sociological Association can be: a truly public scholarly resource rather than a gated space shaped by the ability to pay. In parallel, we worked to reduce friction in submission and production by making procedures more predictable and less resource-intensive for authors, and by strengthening the journal's commitment to transparency, including the routine expectation of replication materials for quantitative work published in the journal (Präg, Ersanilli and Gugushvili, 2025). We have thought of these changes as working on “access” and “voice” simultaneously. By “access,” we mean making it easier for people to read the journal and to submit their work. By “voice,” we mean that a broader range of scholars, institutions, and regions appears on our pages and shapes the debates. Bot… European societies in motion, and a commitment to voice A general sociology journal should reflect the major currents shaping European societies, not by chasing headlines, but by publishing sociological work that helps explain how Europe is changing. Over the past years, the journal has continued to engage research on inequalities and social stratification, climate change and ecological transition, migration and shifting borders, transformations in work and welfare, population aging and health inequalities, and the reconfiguration of social trust and political contestation. The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 further underlined how quickly the horizon of “normal” European development can rupture, and how urgent it becomes to understand societies that have too often been treated as peripheral in general sociological publishing. The Special Issue on understanding Ukrainian society before and after the invasion (Martsenyuk et al., 2024) was therefore an attempt to contribute to that understanding while also practicing what we had argued for from the start: that underrepresented parts of Europe should not appear only through external observation, but should be visible through scholarship that is locally grounded, rigorously theoretical, and fully integrated into European sociology. Throughout our tenure, we also sought to ensure that the journal provided space for the plurality of sociological traditions across Europe. European sociology remains multi-paradigmatic and unevenly structured by regional and institutional inequalities. We therefore aimed to combine a high threshold for publication with broad openness to different intellectual styles, methods, and substantive agendas, and to keep ourselves accountable by paying attention to patterns in submissions and editorial outcomes across regions and approaches. This is unfinished work, but it is work that cannot be postponed if we want a journal that represents European sociology as it exists, rather th… the structural reality remains that a general journal with finite capacity cannot publish all of the strong sociology it receives, even when that sociology deserves a wide readership. This pressure is intertwined with another growing challenge: the difficulty of securing peer reviewers. Reviewing is the central infrastructure of scholarly publishing, but it rests on time and goodwill that are increasingly stretched. Across our term, it has become harder to find the right expertise quickly, particularly for more specialized topics or for underrepresented contexts where the pool of suitable reviewers is smaller. We therefore want to thank reviewers once more, not as a ritual, but as recognition that the journal's quality and fairness depend directly on their labor. We also hope that our community continues to treat reviewing as part of academic reciprocity, because without a sustainable reviewing culture, no editorial team can reliably balance speed, rigor, and equity. Thanks, acknowledgments, and handover We owe special thanks to Patrick Präg, who left his editorial role slightly earlier but contributed enormously to the journal's direction and to the everyday work that makes a journal function. His intellectual judgment, practical ambition, and commitment to fairness and transparency shaped many of the changes implemented during our tenure, and the journal is stronger because of his contributions. We also thank our associate editors, without whom our work would have been impossible: Plamen Akaliyski (Lingnan University), Çetin Çelik (Koç University), Roxanne Connelly (University of Edinburgh), Ivana Dobrotić (University of Zagreb), Marta Dominguez Folgueras (Sciences Po), Magne P. Flemmen (University of Oslo), Pablo Gracia (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Mobarak Hossain (London School of Economics and Political Science), Mathieu Ichou (INED), Katya Ivanova (Tilburg University), Cyril Jayet (Sorbonne University), Agnieszka Kubal (University of Oxford), Anna K…
February 5, 2026 at 2:48 PM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
hetanshah.bsky.social
The university funding crisis finally starting to make it into newspaper editorials
www.ft.com/content/82f5...
With universities making a loss on teaching domestic graduates, and almost half of universities in England facing deficits this year, student loans need to be reviewed as part of a much broader, and urgent, rethink of how UK universities are funded.
February 5, 2026 at 7:25 AM
cmonden.bsky.social
So looking forward to reading this: Morbid - Debunking Modern Longevity Science, by Saul Justin Newman. Pre-ordered this morning, out in June. mitpress.mit.edu/978026205271...
Morbid
Our morbid fascination with death and dying has created an opening for all manner of skullduggery in the science of aging—an area of study that Morbid ...
mitpress.mit.edu
February 3, 2026 at 2:30 PM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
carolinerussell.bsky.social
“Jaywalking is permitted in London. In 1966, the police tried to crack down on it, but gave up after three months.”

People walk and cycle on roads by right, people drive under licence.

Jaywalking is not a thing in English law and Waymo must not change that.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Self-driving taxis are coming to London – should we be worried? | Jack Stilgoe
Waymo’s cars were first rolled out in San Francisco, but the English capital’s old roads, pelican crossings and jaywalkers may pose issues for AI, says science and technology professor Jack Stilgoe
www.theguardian.com
February 2, 2026 at 3:48 PM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
davidallengreen.bsky.social
Instead of conferring titles, gongs and baubles and then demanding those titles, gongs and baubles be removed…

…perhaps as a modern, mature polity we should have far fewer titles, gongs and baubles in the first place.
February 2, 2026 at 11:28 PM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
hggaddy.bsky.social
Come join our workshop on excess mortality methodology! It will be two great days of expert talks, discussion groups, and me revealing the results of our many analyst project! 40+ teams have signed up to estimate 1918 pandemic deaths with the method of their choice -- results should be fascinating!
thegreatleap22116.bsky.social GREATLEAP COST Action @thegreatleap22116.bsky.social · 5d
Workshop “Bridging methods to measure excess mortality: One Epidemic, Many Estimates (1EME)”.
21–22 May 2026, London School of Economics. In-person. Open to all; limited travel funding for UK/EU grad students & GREATLEAP members. Register by 15 Mar 2026 (funding: 15 Feb).🧵⬇️
February 2, 2026 at 12:51 PM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
breznaunate.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/d41... #wikipedia @wikipedia.org #openscience #citizenscience
Wikipedia is needed now more than ever, 25 years on
The online encyclopedia is an antidote to an increasingly poisoned information ecosystem. Researchers should help to nourish it.
www.nature.com
January 29, 2026 at 12:37 PM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
davidallengreen.bsky.social
This is a great piece by @phillipspobrien.bsky.social on why it is the President and not his evil counsellors that is to blame for ICE and its excesses - and why the media are pretending otherwise.
phillipspobrien.bsky.social Phillips OBrien @phillipspobrien.bsky.social · 8d
Just sent out this free piece. The response to the execution of Alex Pretti reveals how we have gotten into this mess. The anger is not directed at Trump, who caused this whole situation. open.substack.com/pub/phillips...
The Whitewashing Of Trump
It Is Never His Fault When It Always Is: A Case Study
open.substack.com
January 28, 2026 at 8:13 AM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
dspi-oxford.bsky.social
We're hiring for a Post-Doctoral Researcher! Are you...
Close to the completion of / have completed a doctorate in a social science discipline?
A specialist in inequality, social policy, or social mobility?
Experienced in data management and analysis?
If so, apply:
https://ow.ly/Uzse50Y15Gz
We're recruiting! Post-doctoral Researcher in Inequality, Social Policy and Social Mobility. Deadline: 6 Feb 2026
January 23, 2026 at 10:00 AM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
pengzell.bsky.social
JOB! I'm hiring a postdoc for 2 years on my ERC MaMo project.

Looking for someone with strong quant methods, ongoing work close to the project's aims, and a desire to publish in sociology. Start flexible in the next 12 months.

Formal call out shortly, but contact me first.
Markets and Mobility: How Employers Structure Economic Opportunity Intergenerational mobility, measuring the ability to achieve economic success regardless of family background, is a critical reflection of a society’s commitment to equality of opportunity. Rising income inequality has raised concerns about the potential erosion of upward mobility. While education has traditionally been viewed as the path to mobility, its transformative power is facing challenges in a rapidly evolving job market. This project reorients the focus of intergenerational mobility research by highlighting the labor market as an arena for the reproduction of advantage. It employs a comparative approach, using administrative data from four countries: Sweden, Austria, England, and the United States. It also incorporates evidence from a broader set of nations through cross-national surveys, longitudinal household surveys, labor force surveys, secondary data, and digital trace data. The project employs cutting-edge empirical methods, including quasi- experimental designs, event studies, within-family comparisons, decomposition analyses, counterfactual simulations, and diagnostic checks to rigorously assess the extent of inequalities in the labor market. The research investigates how family background influences the sorting of individuals to employers and workplaces, accounting for education and occupation, and explores variations in career progression within and between employers. It comprehensively catalogues and assesses mechanisms shaping workplace inequality, contributing to the development of social closure theory. Additionally, the project evaluates intervention strategies, encompassing both employer practices and government actions, to promote fair opportunity in the labor market.
January 21, 2026 at 12:32 PM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
annpettifor.bsky.social
Gabriel Zucman on the shocking concentration of extreme wealth in the United States….
gzucman.substack.com?r=nle0&utm_c...
January 19, 2026 at 9:40 AM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
jeffgoodell.bsky.social
As a journalist, I've spent lots of time climbing around in old coal plants. They're all rotted-out, cob-webbed piles of metal, industrial haunted houses on the verge of collapse. Keeping them going is yet another sign American energy poverty and political decline.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/16/c...
Trump Wants to Halt Almost All Coal Plant Shutdowns. It Could Get Messy.
www.nytimes.com
January 16, 2026 at 12:06 PM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
ginnybraun.bsky.social
So depressing when the discourse of science as pure, separable from, and not related to, real world actions is being perpetuate by those with the power to change this...

www.theguardian.com/science/2026...
Royal Society president reignites Elon Musk row by defending lack of action
Society should only eject fellows for fraud or other defects in their research, says Paul Nurse
www.theguardian.com
January 14, 2026 at 9:42 PM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
cmonden.bsky.social
What a wonderful book! If you read just one book in 2026, please consider this briliant one by @drkatemarvel.bsky.social. Rich, wise, challenging, moving, funny - all at the same time. Whatever you think, feel or know about climate change & science, it won't disappoint. bookshop.org/p/books/huma...
Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet
Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet
bookshop.org
January 8, 2026 at 9:01 AM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
tomflood.bsky.social
"Display screen manufacturer Tesla, hopes to add driving capabilities to latest model."
two people sitting touching a big screen Display screen manufacturer Tesla, hopes to add driving capabilities to latest model.
January 14, 2026 at 3:52 PM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
drsimevans.carbonbrief.org
The utterly shameless & widely covered "report" out today, claiming net zero will "cost" £9tn is based on:

* Assuming free fossil-fuel energy, free petrol cars, free gas boilers, free gas power plants etc

AND

* Including climate damages in the "cost" of net zero

I kid you not, it is that stupid
drsimevans.carbonbrief.org Simon Evans @drsimevans.carbonbrief.org · 24d
🧵A political/media guide to the "truth" about net-zero

1) Add up costs to install & run a net-zero energy system
2) Pretend fossil-fuelled alternatives wld be free
3) Do say "eco zealots are bankrupting us"
4) Don't say "free cars if we scrap net-zero" cos it sounds ridiculous
5) That's it!

1/10
January 13, 2026 at 7:37 AM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
sociologyoxford.bsky.social
Huge congratulations to Lucy Hu & Shreyas Hallur on receiving Halsey Prizes for the MSc in Sociology 2024–25 🎉

🏆 Lucy won Best Overall Performance while Shreyas won Best Thesis!

www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/article/lucy...
Lucy Hu and Shreyas Hallur win A.H. Halsey Prizes for MSc results
7 January 2026
www.sociology.ox.ac.uk
January 8, 2026 at 2:00 PM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
oxfordclarion.bsky.social
Clarion news: We’re leaving Twitter (’X’). We can’t condone the objectionable content it now promotes, which goes against everything we believe and the Clarion tradition. Our live posting is now here on Bluesky, with all this plus much more in our email newsletter twice a week.
January 9, 2026 at 12:35 PM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
sarahz.bsky.social
I would really caution anyone against implying that paywalling this feature is a legitimate response to public outcry. The paywall is an endorsement, not a restriction. Musk is saying "this thing you're all talking about is valuable. Pay me for it." The actual material effect is just monetization.
January 9, 2026 at 8:17 AM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
philipncohen.com
Trump just withdrew the US from the UN Population Fund. For obvious reasons: "working to uphold the rights and choices of women, girls and young people... Through our work, we ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe, and every young person can fulfil their potential."
UNFPA Latest MA News Midwives offer a ray of hope amid horror, as harsh winter grips Gaza
January 8, 2026 at 1:49 AM
cmonden.bsky.social
What a wonderful book! If you read just one book in 2026, please consider this briliant one by @drkatemarvel.bsky.social. Rich, wise, challenging, moving, funny - all at the same time. Whatever you think, feel or know about climate change & science, it won't disappoint. bookshop.org/p/books/huma...
Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet
Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet
bookshop.org
January 8, 2026 at 9:01 AM
cmonden.bsky.social
Silly Con Folly is at it again: Can you optimize love? Bleak. Gift article link: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/06/s...
Can You Optimize Love?
www.nytimes.com
January 7, 2026 at 10:14 AM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
kph3k.bsky.social
I wrote about Nucleus Genomics' "Have your best baby" ad campaign and Kris Jenner's "best version of myself" facelift, the parallels between embryo selection and cosmetic surgery, and competing definitions of "eugenics"

kathrynpaigeharden.substack.com/p/have-your-...
"Have Your Best Baby"
Four parallels between cosmetic surgery and polygenic embryo selection, two competing definitions of "eugenics," and one short excerpt from my forthcoming book
kathrynpaigeharden.substack.com
January 4, 2026 at 7:17 PM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
tomtheuns.bsky.social
Interesting court decision: marriage annulled because the officiant used ChatGPT for the vows

Dutch law (1:67(1) BW) requires fiancées recognize one another as spouse and accept the duties of marriage

The ChatGPT vows, that they 'stand beside' and 'choose' one another were considered insufficient
lydienee.bsky.social Lydia van Rooijen @lydienee.bsky.social · 29d
Opmerkelijke uitspraak: huwelijk ongeldig omdat de speech is geschreven door ChatGPT, waardoor niet de verplichte wettelijke verklaring is afgelegd.
uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/details?id=E...
Rechtspraak.nl - Zoeken in uitspraken
Zoeken in uitspraken
uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl
January 7, 2026 at 8:05 AM
Reposted by Christiaan Monden
ianwalker.bsky.social
Critically, we also need the public to support actions that enable older people to live great lives without having to drive for when they fail the eye tests. So the public need to get onboard with no pavement parking, pedestrian priority, denser housing, fewer out-of-town shopping centres, etc etc
yougov.co.uk YouGov @yougov.co.uk · 29d
90% of Britons support government proposals to require drivers over the age of 70 to have their vision checked every three years - including 89% of the over-65s

yougov.co.uk/topics/trave...
January 7, 2026 at 8:11 AM