Faculty and Staff Political and Social Sciences Department

Head of Department

Arnout van de Rijt

Unable to solve the 'What do these 3 sociological problems have in common?' puzzle posed to him in an introduction lecture by an inspiring professor, van de Rijt quit his music studies to pursue a Master's in Sociology at Utrecht University. His future PhD advisor who happened to be on sabbatical in the Netherlands then convinced him to do his graduate studies at Cornell University in the USA (2002-2007) after which he worked as assistant professor (2007-2012) and tenured associate professor (2012-2015) at the State University of New York. Circumstance led van de Rijt to return to his alma mater where he served as professor of Sociology (2016-2019) and ran into a future colleague at a conference who invited him to apply for an open position as Chair in Sociology at EUI's SPS Department where he has worked since (2019-). Van de Rijt researches the role of chance and path dependence in life courses and careers.

Our Faculty

The SPS Department is one of Europe’s leading centres for research on comparative politics, political behaviour and political sociology, the sociology of inequality, analytic sociology, and international relations and security.

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Director of Graduate Studies

Filip Kostelka has general responsibility for all matters related to the course of study, including supervision, seminar attendance, admission to successive years, the fulfilment of requirements such as term papers, etc.

Researchers

Successful candidates from all the EU Member States, Associate States and non-EU countries come to Florence to study for a Ph.D. in the Department of Political and Social Sciences.

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