Joe Soss, Dale T. Mortensen Senior Fellow:

"AIAS is a fantastic opportunity. We’re given the best possible working conditions and have the time and freedom to concentrate on our research. The facilities and the support from the staff have been just fantastic and a lot of effort is being put into getting us settled and making us part of not just AIAS but the entire university and the city.  It’s an incredibly exciting place to be, with excellent researchers from many different fields," says Joe Soss, who is a political scientist and professor at Minnesota University, USA.

He has already collaborated with several AU researchers and looks forward to developing these relationships and to taking a closer look at the Danish welfare system.

"The Danish welfare system is very interesting for someone like me, who studies the connection between how we organise our societies and the the creation of inequality and poverty. I look forward to testing some of the theoretical models I have developed in my work in the USA on Danish conditions. Hopefully, this will teach us something about how to combat poverty and inequality."

Joe Soss is a political scientist and professor at the University of Minnesota in the United States. He is one of the USA's leading authorities on inequality and poverty and the recipient of the Harrington Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for his latest book Disciplining the Poor:Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race.

Cheryl Mattingly, Dale T. Mortensen Senior Fellow:

“AIAS gives me time. A completely different kind of time than we’re used to in our daily academic work with teaching, administrative tasks, meetings and such. Here, I have time for research, for in-depth study and for exciting conversations with colleagues. This has a definite effect on the atmosphere here at AIAS. The researchers who’ve moved in are a happy, excited flock, “says Dr Mattingly.

She is a professor of anthropology and recipient of the three-year Dale T. Mortensen senior fellowship at AIAS. Cheryl Mattingly points to another important aspect of her fellowship.

"AIAS is a perfect opportunity to extend my working relationships with some the many talent AU researchers with whom I’ve already cooperated over the years. I hope that my stay here will help establish some long-term relations between Aarhus University and my own university.”
 

Cheryl Mattingly, professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California in the United States. She has won several awards and academic awards for her work, most recently the Stirling Book Prize for her book The Paradox of Hope:Journeys through a Clinical Borderland.

Marie Braad Lund, Dale T. Mortensen Junior Fellow:

"The thought of getting to sit under the same roof with other talen:ted researchers from all over the world and from many different fields is what I found particularly attractive. As a natural scientist, you can easily become very specialised and bury yourself in your own little area of expertise. In addition to making important progress in my own research, I hope that my fellowship at AIAS will also broaden my horizons and give me a better understanding of how my particular discipline can be applied and made relevant to other researcher’s fields, and vice versa," says Marie Lund, and adds that she has already begun to engage in fruitful dialogue with some of the other researchers. One of these researchers is Lotte Philipsen, Jens Christian Skou Junior Fellow. She comes from the humanities and does research on how art uses new media and technologies, including how modern art uses gene technology and DNA material.

"On this point, my insight into my field can contribute to enhancing her research. AIAS is a fantastic platform for this kinds of rewarding and surprising academic dialogue."

Marie Braad Lund is a biologist. Her AIAS fellowship brings her home to Aarhus University, where she took her PhD degree in 2009. Since 2010, she has been affiliated with Stanford University as a post doc in a position partly financed by a grant from the Carlsberg Foundation. Marie Braad Lund’s research focus is symbioses and their evolutionary development over time.