Aurelian Muntean

  Associate Professor, PhD

  Office: Expoziției 30A, room 703

  E-mail: muntean [at] politice {.} ro

  Department: Department of sociology

   Office hours: Appointment by email 

 ORCID iD iconorcid.org/0000-0001-5177-8769

Courses: Statistics for Social Sciences (undergraduate); Introduction to Analysis of the Labour Market in the European Union (undergraduate), Comparative Politics (undergraduate), Comparative Labour Relations and Social Dialogue (graduate), Varieties of Capitalism and Economic Development (graduate), Sociology of Interest Groups (graduate), Data Analysis Methods (graduate) - this class is supported by DataCamp, the most intuitive learning platform for data science.

Research interests: Trade unions - state - firms relations; Change and regulation of the workforce market and labour relations; Labour and migration; Parties and party systems; Electoral systems, electoral competition and electoral clientelism; Varities of Capitalism; Executive-legislative relations; Church-state relations; Democracy.

Short bio: I have studied Political Science (BA) between 1996-2000 at ”Babeș-Bolyai” University in Cluj-Napoca, then I have received my MA Degree with Distinction in Political Science in 2001 from the Central European University (CEU) Budapest, then in 2011 I have received my PhD in Sociology at SNSPA Bucharest with a thesis coordinated by Professor Vintilă Mihăilescu. I was Fulbright Senior Fellow at Columbia University, OSI International Policy Fellow, Eastern European Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C; OSF Scholarship - Summer Program in Advanced Quantitative Methods, ICPSR, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I have coordinated or been a member (researcher or expert) in more than 24 research projects since 2002. I have collected quantitative and qualitative empirical data as principal investigator or research expert, in projects funded by international or domestic institutions, on topics such as social dialogue (European Commission), campaign personalization and legislative behavior of representatives (UEFISCDI), social inequalities (Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission), deliberative democracy (Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission), election studies (Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission), higher education in Romania (Ministry of National Education and the European University Association), development of civic participation in Romania (GMFUS Black Sea Trust and EEA Grants), political culture and civic involvement (CNCSIS), interest groups (Open Society Institute; US Embassy in Bucharest; FDSC Romania), electoral clientelism in Romania 2013-2016. I have extensive experience in collecting and analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data, as well as in project management. I authored the book Quantitative and Qualitative Data: Introduction to Methods and Techniques of Data Analysis with Applications in R, Stata, Excel and NVivo (2022, Cluj University Press). I have published in Electoral Studies, European Journal of Industrial Relations, Government and Opposition, Europe-Asia Studies, The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Social Change Review, Journal for the Study of Religion and Ideologies, Romanian Journal of Society and Politics, and contributed to several collective volumes. I am member in the American Political Science Association (APSA), European Political Science Association (EPSA), Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA), Council for European Studies (CES), the Romanian Society for Political Studies (SRSP - I have been vicepresident of the board of directors between 2003 and 2005), and the Society of Romanian Sociologists (SSR - I am vicepresident of the board of directors since 2017). I have presented papers at international conferences such as APSA (2005, 2010, 2016), EPSA (2015, 2016), CES (2015, 2016), ECPR (2006, 2013), and IREC (2010, 2013). I have been the principal co-organizer of the international conference Industrial Relations in Europe - IREC 2013. I am the coordinator of the MA program in Labour Studies (http://politice.ro/ro/labourstudies) from the Faculty of Political Science, SNSPA, the only MA program on this field with English as teaching language, in Romania. The MA program in Labour Studies is member of the European Master in Labour Studies Network (https://www.emls-mest.eu). I was part of the team that developed the VAA (Voting Advice Application) online instrument Testează-ți Votul (http://www.testvot.eu), the only project on informed voting, which was successfully implemented in Romania in four consecutive elections.