Recently, the Department of Sociology at Groningen celebrated its 80-year existence. Six videos were made as part of this celebration, showing the diversity of research at our Department. This video was made for the Families Lifecourse and Ageing Group, which I am coordinating:
Research lines
Visualisation in research
Visualisation is key in any project involving datapoints. Yet the reader is not ‘showered in graphical displays’ [Anscombe, 1973]. I am an active promotor of the use of visualisation, and try to help people make graphs in several ways: i) by making the graphs for them; ii) by giving visualisation-workshops in R; iii) by creating R-packages that facilitate the use of graphs.
Evolutionary perspectives on human behaviour
Humans are a weird species.
Studying the number of children people want and have
There is huge variation in the number of children people (would like to) have over time / across the globe / within countries. I try to study the determinants of this variation, including individual factors like wealth and education, genetic factors, and social influences.
Evolutionary perspectives on human height variation
My research in the past has focussed on variation in human height. In particular, how evolutionary processes have been and are shaping variation in stature. I tried to address questions like: Why is there such variation across countries in height? Why are women on average shorter than man? In what ways does height play a role in mate choice and competition? Does natural selection act on height in contemporary populations? Why are the Dutch so tall? Why am I so tall?