Beautiful performance by all Siguldas novada pašvaldība district participants in the greatest Latvian song and dance festival Dziesmu svētki 2023! Congrats! Proud of my mom Antra Plavgo for making more than 700 Sigulda walking sticks to all participants! Priecīgus svētkus!

Full room at the event 'Social investments for resilient economies and societies' bit.ly/SocialInvestme… with CEPS ThinkTank A new 🇪🇸 and 🇧🇪 led attempt to better integrate social investment into #EUFiscalRules ! 🧵⬇️

Happy to present on policy complementarities at the High-level Conference of the Working Group on Social Investment launched by the Spanish Presidency and the Belgian Presidency of the EU. Thank you CEPS ThinkTank, Francesco Corti, FEPS & others for organising.

Congratulations to Johannes Karremans for being appointed as Professor in Political Science at Catholic University of Lille ESPOL ! 👉 espol-lille.eu/en/speaker/joh…

Early deadline is approaching: if you are interested in a #PhD in #Sociology at CDSS/GESS Mannheim, please apply by January 15 (or end of March) 2024. My colleague Ilze Plavgo and I welcome applications in the areas of welfare state reforms, social policies & social inequalities.

A short and concise summary of our newest research on intergenerational educational inequality in sub-Saharan Africa is available in a press release here : uni-mannheim.de/en/news/educat…

New Book! On 12 February 'Between Voters and Eurocrats' will be published by Oxford Academic! Very 😇 to see appraisals by Profs Culpepper, Kriesi & Lefkofridi. A big thank you to Wellbeing Returns on Social Investment for moral and intellectual support! Check it out (and buy?😉): global.oup.com/academic/produ…

Excited to participate in a high-level discussion on the future social agenda of the European Union, organised by the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU. Happy to see Wellbeing Returns on Social Investment work on Social investment returns among top discussion points. Huge thanks to Francesco Corti

Today at #ESDE launch event we spoke about the role of ECEC, education & training policies and their effects on intergenerational fairness in education, upskilling, and skill preservation. We discussed Matthew Effects & importance of policy complementarities. To be continued.

Book by Vicente Valentim among the books of 2024! Great work on improving our understanding of the “normalisation” of the radical right. Here’s a quote by chief data reporter J.Burn-Murdoch on Vicente’s book: