Max Falkenberg

I am a physicist and computational social scientist based at City, University of London, and a visiting Fellow in the Institute for Sustainable Resources at UCL. I completed my PhD in Physics at Imperial College London in 2022. From October 2024, I will be starting an EU funded Marie Curie Fellowship in the Department of Network and Data Science at the Central European University in Vienna, Austria.

My research focuses on computational social science with a particular interest in the structural underpining of political polarisation. I have published 15 peer-reviewed papers including in Nature Climate Change, PNAS Nexus, PLOS Climate Change, Physical Review E, Physical Review Research, Communications Physics and Proceedings of the Royal Society B. I have also contributed to a report published at COP28 on climate tipping points, and have released a dataset (forthcoming, ICWSM'24) for the Indian microblogging platform Koo. I regularly act as an academic reviewer including for Nature Human Behaviour, PNAS Nexus, EPJ Data Science, PLOS One, Communications Physics, and others. 

My work has been covered extensively in the media including in The Guardian, The Times, The Spectator, RAI TV in Italy and on BBC World Service Radio. I have also provided bespoke data analysis to The Times and AFP Paris on climate scepticism online. I have presented my work at multiple international conferences, and to industry and policy forums including at Spotify and The Bank of England.

I have an interest in science policy having written articles for political think-tanks and for the LSE climate blog. I spent three months as a policy analyst working in the UK Houses of Parliament for the EFRA Select Committee.