Professor Michael Mair PhD

Research Overview

My primary research interests lie in politics, the state and governmental practice, particularly their changing contemporary forms and attendant problems of accountability, as well as in the philosophy and methodology of the natural and social sciences approached analytically and empirically. In the course of empirical research which has been largely sociological, ethnographic and practice-oriented in character, I have investigated new ways of governing from an ethnomethodological perspective. I am currently involved in looking further at how politics is practiced in and realised through new bureaucratic and administrative structures as well as a series of issues relating to problems of accountability in a variety of settings. I also have a general interest in the methodology and the philosophy of the natural and social sciences, incorporating empirical studies of qualitative, quantitative and digital methods as well as experimentation, machine learning and artificial intelligence.