Max Falkenberg

I am a computational social scientist and Marie Curie Research Fellow in the Department of Network and Data Science at the Central European University in Vienna, Austria. I also hold a Visiting Fellow position in the Inverse Complexity Group at IT:U in Linz, Austria, and in the Institute for Sustainable Resources at UCL. I completed my PhD in Physics at Imperial College London in 2022 and a postdoc in the Department of Mathematics at City, University of London in 2024. 

My research applies network science to problems in computational social science. I am particularly interested in studying the structural underpining of political polarisation, climate communication and politics, and climate finance. I have published multiple peer-reviewed papers including in Nature Climate Change, Nature Communications (climate finance, polarization), PNAS Nexus, PLOS Climate Change, Physical Review E, Physical Review Research, Communications Physics, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, amongst others. I have also contributed to a report published at COP28 on climate tipping points, and have released a dataset (ICWSM'24) for the Indian microblogging platform Koo. I regularly act as an academic reviewer including for Nature Human Behaviour, One Earth, PNAS Nexus, EPJ Data Science, PLOS One, Communications Physics, Scientific Reports, Royal Society Open Science and others. 

My work has been covered extensively in the media including in The Guardian, The Times, The Spectator, Bloomberg, El Pais in Spain, 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 have also written an op-ed in The Banker (by the Financial Times) on why fossil fuel phase out from the banking sector has failed thus far. I spent three months as a policy analyst working in the UK Houses of Parliament for the EFRA Select Committee.