Welcome

I am an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University (Denmark) and work at the King Frederik Center for Public Leadership. I am also an affiliated scholar at The People Lab, Harvard Kennedy School. Much of my work focuses on the people who deliver public services — how to attract them, how to support them, and how AI can help public managers make better decisions. I co-design studies with government partners to ensure that research is useful to practitioners and adopted at scale.

My research uses large-scale field experiments and causal inference methods. It focuses on the following topics:

  • Recruiting, selecting, and retaining the public workforce
  • The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in public policy and government
  • The motivation of citizens to contribute to public goods

Publication:
“How Do Strikes and Lockouts Affect Applications toDanish Public Service Professional Education Programs?A Synthetic Control Analysis” in the journal Public Administration

Study

Publication:
“How Ensembling AI and Public Managers Improves Decision-Making” in the journal Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory

Study

Publication:
“Financial Incentives for COVID-19 Vaccination – A Cluster Randomized Clinical Trial” in the journal JAMA Network Open

Study

Selected research projects

TRUST-AI

2026–2030

Citizen trust in AI government: Project TRUST-AI delivers crucial new knowledge to guide a responsible implementation of AI, one that builds and secures citizen trust (DFF – Independent Research Fund Denmark, 6.3 Mio DKK, Co-Principal Investigator together with PI Mogens Jin Pedersen).

MORE

2024–2028

Megastudy on Recruitment: Project MORE researches how to sustainably recruit, select, and retain skilled international nursing staff (Carlsberg Foundation, 9.1 Mio DKK, Work-package lead together with PI Christian B. Jacobsen and Diana Galos).