dr. Dimitris Pavlopoulos

Associate Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, Sociology

Associate Professor, Research Programmes - Social Sciences, Social Inequality and the Life Course (SILC)

Personal information

Dimitris Pavlopoulos is an Associate Professor in Sociology and Research Methods at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). He is also an ERC laureate (2019). He started his scientific career as a contract (junior) researcher in 2001 at the National Centre for Social Research in Athens-Greece. He subsequently carried out his PhD project titled 'Wage Mobility Patterns in Europe' from 2003 until 2007 at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. After completing his PhD, he was employed at the research institute CEPS/INSTEAD (currently LISER) in Luxembourg, where he worked as a postdoc for the International Master in Social Policy Analysis that was given by CEPS/INSTEAD and the University of Leuven (KULeuven). Since 2009, he has been working at the VU, first at the Department of Methods and Statistics and then at the Department of Sociology.

Research

Dimitris Pavlopoulos is an expert in the fields of non-standard employment and statistical methodology. Non-standard employment is in the heart of scientific and political debate in Europe. Governments and employers see employment with non-standard contracts as a way to achieve flexibility to overcome crises and economic fluctuations. In his research, Dimitris Pavlopoulos studies the career-effects of non-standard employment. In his ERC project, he studies how individual career restrictions and choices, organisational strategies as well as policies and institutional change determine why non-standard employment leads to prosperous or precarious careers. In this way, he aims at improving our knowledge on how we can best organize labour markets for the benefit of society.

Knowledge of the role of non-standard employment in employment careers requires the development and application of novel statistical methods. For this purpose, the research of Dimitris Pavlopoulos studies the application of mixture hidden Markov models in exploring and explaining different employment-career types. He also studies how this method can be used to improve the production of Official Statistics by National Statistical Institutes.

Teaching

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculty of Social Sciences 2024-25:

Research Methods in Communication Science (MSc in Communication Science)
Tutorial in Multilevel Models (Research Master Social Sciences)
Master Thesis (MSc in Sociology)

Grants

ERC PoC (Proof of Concept) grant for the project "Combine Measures of Social Assistance Benefit Indicators to correct for measurement Error (COMBINE)". Duration 1/9/2024 - 28/2/2026. Budget: €150,000.
ERC CoG (Consolidator) grant for the project "Righting the Wrongs. A Life Course Dynamics Approach for Non-Standard Employment". Year of award: 2019. Duration 1/9/2020 - 28/2/2026. Budget: €1,996,377
Educational innovation grant (with M. de Moor e.a.) "SHARESTATS - Statistiekopgaven open delen met een vakcommunity van docenten", Collaboration project FSW-VU, FGB-VU, EUR, UU and UvA, Funded by SURF – Activiteitenplan Pijler Open leermateriaal. This project resulted in the creation of a database of approximately 4,000 questions in statistics for social sciences that are available in the generic form of the R package R/Exams and can be imported to most digital learnings environments (e.g. Canvas, Blackboard) and test systems (e.g. Test Vision) that are used by Dutch Universities. Duration 1/9/2020 - 31/8/2022 Budget: €175,000
NWO Research Talent scheme for the PhD project “Non-Standard Employment: Prospects or Precarity?”. Year of award: 2016. PhD candidate: Lucille Mattijssen. Role: main applicant. Budget (financed by NWO): €218,474
PhD project “Error correction in the measurement of temporary employment”. Year of award: 2015. PhD candidate: Paulina Pankowska. Co-financed (75%) by Statistics Netherlands (CBS). Role: co-supervisor/co-applicant. Budget (financed by the CBS): €170,348
“The effect of flexible employment on the labour market: a longitudinal approach”, project with the Observatory on Economic and Social Development – Labour Institute, Greek General Confederation of Labour. Year of award: 2013 and 2014. Role: principal investigator. Budget: €20,000

Ancillary activities