Arnout Van De Rijt

Arnout Van De Rijt is a Full-time Professor and Head of the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute (EUI), Florence, Italy. He joined EUI in September 2019 after serving as Assistant and Associate Professor at Stony Brook University (2007-2016) and Professor of Sociology at Utrecht University (2016-2019). He co-founded Stony Brook’s Center for Computational Social Science and currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Sociological Science.

• PhD in Sociology from Cornell University (2007)
• President of International Network of Analytical Sociology
• Elected member of European Academy of Sociology

His research spans computational social science, inequality formation (Matthew effects, cumulative advantage), social norms, network analysis, and experimental methodologies. He specializes in quantitative approaches to cooperation, social media dynamics, and pandemic-related behavioral studies.

Recent publications (2023-2025) examine reinforcement mechanisms in inequality, gender disparities in media sentiment, fairness in economic interactions, trust in digital markets, climate action incentives, and misinformation mitigation via real-time ratings. These works intersect behavioral economics, network theory, and computational sociology.

• Scientific Awards:
  • Lynton Freeman Early Career Award (2010)
  • Raymond Boudon Early Career Award (2017)

Van De Rijt supervises 16 PhD/Master’s students and postdoctoral fellows across topics like collective action, gender inequality, and computational modeling. His collaborations include researchers at institutions such as Stony Brook, Utrecht, and EUI’s Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies.