Delighted to have secured an ERC Consolidator grant for ID-COMPRESSION:
Starting in January 2025, this project will develop and test a framework for understanding how identity is “written in” to social information via social interaction; how this reduces complexity; and thus social information (like attitudes) become a substrate for identity. Of course, this is closely related to familiar social psychology topics explaining how people generate simplified representations of the world — like categorization, stereotyping, heuristics etc. — but is more basic, and provides a fundamental explanation for the social process of simplification and its social functions. Mini-spoiler: the framework treats social interaction as a form of computation, with compressible identity-laden information as a product.
Like DAFINET, it will have an applied maths/network science/information team working closely with a social science team to develop a novel take on social processes.
We’ll be recruiting two Postdocs (probably up to five years) and two funded PhD students in the second half of 2024 for a January 2025 start, so keep an eye on our social media accounts for information and announcements.