Mathias Wullum Nielsen

Short presentation

I'm a sociologist of science interested in questions of social stratification and demographic diversity. Leveraging field- and survey experiments, and large-scale scientific metadata, my research examines how scientific institutions are organized and how their norms, incentives, and hierarchical structures reinforce social disparities and shape careers and knowledge creation.

My research has been published in general science, interdisciplinary, and social science outlets such as Science, Nature, Nature Human Behaviour, PNAS, Nature Communications, and Research Policy, Sociology, British Journal of Sociology, Higher Education and Research Evaluation. Some of this work has received coverage in international news outlets like the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Science Magazine, Harvard Business Review, the Guardian, El Pais, Forbes, Scientific American, and World Economic Forum.

Teaching

I teach courses in 'Sociological Project Deisgn' (MA-level) and 'Advanced Knowledge, Organisation and Politics' (MA-level).

Office hours: Mondays: 15.30-16.30.

Current projects:

• 4-year Sapere Aude grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark (2024–2028). PI. Title: Global North-South Disparities in Science.
  3-year Synergy grant from the Villum Foundation (2020–2023). Joint PI with Roberta Sinatra (2024-2027). Title: Quantifying the Prevalence and Diffusion of Generative AI in Science.