Inequalities in study choices and career outcomes between population groups, including Inequalities in study choices and career outcomes between population groups, including differences across gender and socioeconomic background, are highly persistent. This hints at unobserved barriers that limit diversity and prevent people from selecting the careers they would be most productive in. As a society, this may keep us from having the best people in the most important positions. Our limited understanding of what drives individual differences in educational choices and labor market success prevents us from identifying such barriers. My project builds on an ongoing effort to incorporate insights from personality psychology into economics. Past research indicates that personality traits (and other non-cognitive traits) have high potential for explaining career choices and outcomes. I will introduce new measures for four promising traits, willingness to compete, ability to cope with time pressure, public speaking aversion and ability to multitask. Time pressure, competition, public speaking and multitasking are hallmarks of high-level careers and individual ability to cope with these pressures is therefore a plausible determinant of career outcomes. These traits vary strongly across individuals, as evidenced by studies that document differences across gender, socio-economic background and educational achievement levels. However, the potential of these traits for explaining individual differences in career choices is under-researched, in part because we do not yet know how to measure them properly in large samples. I will develop new measures for willingness to compete, ability to cope with time pressure, public speaking aversion and ability to multitask which can be implemented in large-scale survey panels. I will then collect large-scale data where these traits can be linked to a wide range of career outcomes to investigate how these traits shape individual careers.

This project innovatively combines science and technology studies (STS) with the anthropology of development to interrogate how uncertainties are understood and dealt with in environmental planning. We use deltas in South and Southeast Asia as our research object. These deltas are dynamic and densely populated environments typified by agricultural intensification, rapid urbanisation and vulnerability to the effects of climate change. Recognition of the existence of multiple (definitions of) deltas informs the main project hypothesis: much delta knowledge used in the South comes from specific epistemic communities, whose knowledge travels through and because of global development-cooperation networks. We trace these networks and travels through space and time to critically examine how delta knowledges are generated and gain authority, and their hybridisation with ‘local’ knowledge and governance practices. We do this for four deltas with diverging cultural and historical trajectories and contemporary dynamics: the Ganges-Brahmaputra and the Mekong serve as contrasting reference against which the Chao Phraya and the Irrawaddy will be studied in greater detail. Engaging with contemporary debates in STS, the analyses will be used for a re-consideration of expertise and the role of experts in dealing with uncertainties. This in turn will inform the formulation of guiding principles for productive and responsible ways of environmental knowing and planning at different scales.

How to be critical in a context where critique is disavowed? How to speak against power while being silenced? How to stay amidst suppression? RESCUE studies how cultural practices in the domains of popular music, contemporary art, and queer cinema, in mainland China and Hong Kong, develop resilient tactics to express their social and political discontent. It theorises resilience and cultural critique in times of intensified authoritarianism and rapid platformization. Whereas such practices can resort to a history of experiences in China to negotiate a recently intensified authoritarianism, cultural practitioners in Hong Kong are facing a compressed authoritarianism – still searching for resilient tactics. RESCUE studies indie music in Hong Kong; folk music in China; the role of official and unofficial art institutes in China and Hong Kong; socially engaged art projects in rural and urban areas in China and Hong Kong; and queer cinema and queer film festivals in China and Hong Kong. It develops a relational comparative analysis between different cultural fields, and at different localities (Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianshui), to unpack the (im)possibilities of critique. RESCUE develops an innovative methodological toolkit, combining ethnography with textual analysis, digital methods, and collaborative research. RESCUE will establish and consolidate a network of academics, cultural practitioners, and activists in mainland China, Hong Kong, East Asia, and Europe, through multiple workshops, a podcast series, performances, screenings, and an exhibition – thereby increasing the social impact of the project. Findings will not only attest to the multivocality, diversity, and vitality of cultural production in mainland China and Hong Kong, thus pushing back against the idea of the omnipotent Chinese state, but also inspire and forge connections to other localities facing a comparable predicament (e.g. Brazil, Hungary, India, Russia, and Turkey).