Konrad Turek

Konrad Turek, PhD

 

I am a sociologist, social researcher and data analyst working as an Assistant Professor at the Human Resource Studies Department at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. At Tilburg, I am involved in interdisciplinary research on social inequality at the Herbert Simon Research Institute. Previously I worked at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) in the Work & Retirement group (where I am currently a guest researcher), and at the University of Amsterdam in the Institutions, Inequalities, and Life courses group (IIL). I received my PhD in sociology at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland (2015). 

 

My research is focused on changing and ageing labour markets, life course inequalities, lifelong learning, ageing policies, age stereotypes, age management and retirement patterns. I specialise in quantitative methodology and statistics, particularly in longitudinal and multilevel analysis, mixture models, structural equation models, and Bayesian statistics. I am also interested in applying agent-based and simulation techniques in social research. My interest in general methodology and epistemology is focused on Charles Peirce’s pragmatism and the context of discovery.

 

In 2020 I developed the Comparative Panel File (CPF) - an open science project to harmonize the world’s major and longest-running household panel surveys. CPF is the first fully open harmonization initiative in the social sciences. It provides a powerful comparative longitudinal dataset that follows the lives of several generations against a changing historical background, warranting an enormous value for social scientists. 

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In 2017 I received a Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship to study the role of human capital investments for retirement transitions [LEEP].

 

For several years I was a core-team member in the Human Capital Study (HCS) – the largest multi-survey labour market research in Poland, which included among other yearly surveys of the general population, employers and students. I was a coordinator of the general HCS Population Survey (one of the largest in Poland with n=18,000). I have also been strongly involved in public policy analysis and policy planning. This includes preparation (as a core-team member) and public consultations of the Polish national strategy for employment of older people Solidarity between Generations 2013-2020 (under the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy). I gained experience as a researcher in research projects granted by Horizon 2020, NORFACE, 7th Framework Program, European Commission, or German Research Foundation. Most of them were related to the challenges of contemporary labour markets, the situation of older workers and ageing policies. 

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I'm strongly involved in several research networks, including being an Executive Committee member of the Society for Longitudinal and Lifecourse Studies (SLLS) and a board member of the Ageing in Europe RN01 Research Network of the European Sociological Association. 

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Since 2020 I am a lecturer at the European Doctoral School of Demography (EDSD) with Multilevel Data Analysis. I have also been teaching methods for comparative analysis, longitudinal and panel analysis, introductory statistics, quantitative methodology, age management at BA, MA and PhD levels.