Full Professor

University of Bucharest, Department of Sociology

Romanian Social Data Archive

Biography

I work at the Department of Sociology of the University of Bucharest, teaching social statistics, research methodology and measurement in the social sciences. I am also the Director of the RODA - Romanian Social Data Archive, being involved in data archiving for almost 20 years, in partnership with the CESSDA - Council of European Social Science Data Archives.

With a joint proposal for CESSDA and ESS - European Social Survey, two of the most important landmark projects in the European lanscape at ESFRI, RODA is about to become a National Research Infrastructure for the social sciences, already included in the National Roadmap for Research Infrastructures, recently published by the Ministry of Research and Innovation. My activity in the research infrastructures area was acknowledged both nationally, appointed as a member of the CRIC - Romanian Committee for Research Infrastructures, and internationally as a Romanian delegate to ESFRI, where I chaired the SCI-SWG - Social and Cultural Innovation Strategy Working Group between 2012 and 2014.

My primary research interest is QCA - Qualitative Comparative Analysis, a novel methodology for social research that inspires a growing community for which I serve as a member of the Advisory Board and Steering Committee at COMPASSS. I have published extensively on methodological aspects, with a key interest in the programming of the minimization algorithms. My main programming environment is R, for which I have contributed a number of packages, among which a highly advanced and sophisticated QCA software. It includes cross-platform, web-based Graphical User Interface written with a custom combination of HTML, Javascript, jQuery, a special SVG library called Raphäel and one the most spectacular R packages called shiny to link everything with the base R.