European solidarity

The long-term viability of European integration relies on a sense that member states and publics share important connections. Whether framed in terms of a European identity, the idea of linked fates, or more prosaically economic interdependence, a feeling that states and publics are connected is essential. Where does such a feeling come from? Does it make sense to think of it as transnational solidarity? Is it stronger in some countries than in others? And how do the European Union’s limits affect who the connectedness extends to?

_{Illustration: Fabien Vienne ‘Cooperation Intereuropeenne’}

Markdown and page formatting

Series: Website development

Some basic notes about text formatting in titles, posts, etc.

Building a new website

Series: Website development

Some initial notes about developing this website.

Idea diffusion

When Black Lives Matter protests exploded in the summer of 2020, they did so on a global scale. Protests around the world invariably had a dual goal: expressing solidarity with the American BLM movement, and linking that movement’s goals to related domestic concerns. I am interested in the international spread of these kinds of political ideas: How are ideas that originate in one context mapped to another situation? How do language barriers affect the diffusion of ideas? And how have social media accelerated and changed the way in which ideas spread?

_{Photo: Elekes Andor (Wikimedia Commons, 83482595, CC BY-SA 4.0)}

Systematic text analysis - language, emotions and judgments

All of the above research projects require an ability to analyze texts: media (both traditional and social), legislative and political debates, party platforms, etc. In particular, I am interested in improving our ability to extract information about the ways an issue is framed from texts, including the emotional and/or moral dimensions of those frames. I develop software tools to do so, with a particular focus on the ability to extract the same kinds of information across a number of different languages, in a way that makes it directly comparable.

_{Illustration: Plutchik’s wheel of emotions}

Tachyons for Style

Building this static site generator theme was the first time I used an Atomic (or Functional) CSS system like Tachyons. It’s a design system that provides very small (which means fast) CSS modules that you can use in your HTML.

Palmer Penguins

Grid is the very first CSS module created specifically to solve the layout problems we’ve all been hacking our way around for as long as we’ve been making websites.

Bakeoff

This theme has a form-to-email feature built in, thanks to the simple Formspree integration. All you need to activate the form is a valid recipient email address saved in the form front matter.