Jakob Laage-Thomsen recently joined the Danish School of Education (DPU), Aarhus University, as part of the Algorithms, Data and Democracy subproject team, led by Associate Professor Helene Friis Ratner. Jakob’s main research focus, and the overall aim of the postdoc, will be to investigate the public sector’s use of predictive algorithms, and how ‘AI expertise’ is involved in changing forms of expertise in public administration.
Jakob recently submitted his PhD thesis at the Department of Organization at Copenhagen Business School, supervised by Professor Leonard Seabrooke, and Associate Professor Anders Blok from the University of Copenhagen. In his thesis he investigated how interactions between public administrative systems and systems of professions and expertise change how citizens shape regulatory governance.
Jakob has a master’s and bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the Department of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen, with many stays abroad, including at Science Po in Paris, London School of Economics and The University of Edinburgh. He works cross-disciplinarily within the fields of public administration and the sociology of professions and expertise, drawing on science and technology studies and political and economic sociology. He enjoys coding, social theory and political economic history. He also has an ongoing interest in new forms of green and environmental engagement in urban contexts, and is editor of Dansk Sociologi, the journal of the Danish Sociological Association.