Maurits van der Veen

Research Interests

Ideas and identity in foreign policy; European integration; the political economy of international altruism; agent-based modeling; identity politics in Western Europe; human rights and humanitarianism

Background

Maurits van der Veen joined the department in 2010. He received his B.A. from Dartmouth College, an M.S. in computer science from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University. His research examines the various ways policy-makers think about ("frame") foreign policy issues, and the impact that different frames, in turn, have on actual policy choices. He has applied this approach to the study of foreign aid policy in Western Europe and the United States, the politics of European integration and EU enlargement, and the terminology used to describe massive human rights violations (what happens if you refuse to call a genocide a genocide?). He also develops agent-based computational models to analyze the impact of social networks on the spread of foreign policy frames, and of ideas more generally.