Peter Thisted Dinesen
Professor of Political Science
I am Professor of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen. I have previously worked as a professor at University College London (UCL), where I am currently an Honorary Professor.
I completed my PhD in Political Science at Aarhus University and after that I worked at the University of Southern Denmark.
Although I am a political scientist by education, I am interested in social science writ large. As such, my work intersects with other disciplines including sociology, social psychology, geography, and public health/epidemiology.
I have a diverse set of research interests, which you can read more about here.
My primary research has concerned trust in strangers (“generalized social trust”); specifically, the question of how trust is formed, including the potential role of immigration and state institutions. More broadly, I am interested in the effects of immigration for both immigrants and immigrant-receiving societies. I have also researched the consequences of local economic conditions and reactions to violent events.
My work has been published in a range of academic social science and public health journals, including American Political Science Review, American Sociological Review, Epidemiology, and Nature Human Behavior, and I have presented it in multiple academic and non-academic fora.
My teaching has centered around political behavior, immigration, political geography, and methods among other subjects. I have supervised a number of Ph.D. students and numerous Master’s students, and collaborated with several of them on research projects.
My work has been covered in various media channels, including Washington Post, CNN, and various Danish outlets. I am also an occasional speaker at public events and my research on neighborhoods was once the subject of a small art installation at the Danish Architecture Center (DAC).