Dr. Ofer Engel

I am a former physicist and software design engineer turned teacher and academic. I am now moving to Leeuwarden after living for the past 14 years in London, a city I am both happy and sad to leave behind.

My main interest lies at the crossroads of data and society, where new ideas emerge and where old ideas appear in a fresh new light. Consider that fifty years ago, scholars from a range of disciplines (e.g., philosophy and statistics) were pretty confident that they have resolved all the central puzzles in the theory of causality.

Few could have anticipated that within a couple of decades, new discoveries would be made, upending our understanding of cause and effect. Fewer still could have anticipated that these contributions would be made by scholars of computer science, of all disciplines.

Today we accept that new forms of data spark the fire of debate between the disciplines and that these debates straddle the world of ideas and the world of action. We have become acquainted with the experience that something fundamental is shifting in the way we know the world. But shifts of this kind are uncommon occurrences. They should remind us that we are living in exciting times. I see my research and my teaching as an invitation to explore what this crossroads means for us today, within the social sciences.