First week in a long time not being a department head. It is a very interesting part of the journey. Outside academic life, there is plenty filling the admin stress void at the moment, but this still feels like a fresh departure and I have more brain cells to spare for conceptual work.
I am allowed to take some research sabbatical after a fairly lengthy administrative run, but am delaying it as I want to have one “normal” year and just inhabit what I am doing here. In particular, I want to spend a lot of time talking to students, colleagues and external people about ideas in these areas.
Using LinkedIn to keep people in my network aware of some things we are working on, by necessity through very top-level and incomplete summaries:
Currently finalising a new course for all PBS MSc and final-year undergraduate students, driven by faculty-led debates on key topics in psychology and behavioural science. Also revamping elements of my Foundations in Behavioural Science course to keep up with a fast-moving field. Open to all sorts of discussions on these!
Working with a really great team to develop the next step of our behavioural science FORGOOD initiative. Some excellent milestones reached, with more to announce soon.
Alongside membership of the Irish Climate Change Advisory Council, I have joined the UNEP Climate and Clean Air Coalition’s Technology and Economic Assessment Panel, with a particular focus on building behavioural science capacities into projects addressing methane and other short-lived climate pollutants.
Completing the programme for this year’s Behavioural Science and the Wider World series.
Continuing to direct the MSc in Behavioural Science, including a new specialism in AI designed by Dario Krpan. Our alumni network is now very extensive, and we will be doing more to understand what people are doing.
We will also shortly hold the first meetings of a new research group on economic psychology and behavioural public administration. This will bring together colleagues, external collaborators, students and early career researchers to study the economic psychological underpinnings of a range of key public administration questions. Some interesting specific projects are taking shape. At a broader level, the contribution economic psychology can make to the type of behavioural science emerging in public policy is something I find fascinating to read and think about.
We have received the first bits of funding, not easy at the moment, for various projects, and some really strong early career researchers are starting to come on board.
I will post more on the substantive aspects of what we are doing, as well as various talks and panels I am involved in. Very happy to talk to anyone around any of these.
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