Mark Levels
Mark Levels (1977) is a Dutch quantitative sociologist. He uses quantitative, qualitative and experimental methods to study how governments can help people to live meaningful and productive lives, and prepare now for tomorrow's societies and labor markets. He particularly focuses on vulnerable groups.
Prof. dr. Mark Levels is Professor of Health, Education and Work at Maastricht University. He is program director of the research program Health, Skills, and Inequality at the Research Centre for Education and the Labor Market (ROA) of Maastricht University, member of the ROA management team, fellow of the Berlin Social Science Centre (WZB), fellow of the Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE)of Maastricht University, and fellow of the Amsterdam Centre for Learning Analytics (ACLA). He teaches macrosociology at University College Maastricht (UCM).
Mark uses quantitative, qualitative and experimental sociological methods to study how individuals’ lives are shaped by government. He leads a large international research consortium that studies how governments can mediate the impact of AI and robotization on work, education, inequality, and welfare in Europe (TECHNEQUALITY). He is also one of the principal architects of the Nationaal Cohortonderzoek Onderwijs (NCO) and was appointed as one of the first national coordinators of the NCO with the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). The NCO is one of the largest and most comprehensive research efforts on education in the world. He also currently coordinates an international research group that studies individual and institutional determinants of youth inactivity in various countries (NEET).
Marks research has been published in several books and journals such as the American Sociological Review, PlosONE, and the European Sociological Review, and has received accolades, both for scientific excellence and societal impact. To support his various research programs, Mark has secured grants from highly competitive grant competitions, including the Open Research Area, NWO PROO and ProBo competitions, and the EC H2020 program. The chair of Health, Education and Work is partly endowed by Sardes (0.2).
Before being appointed as full professor, Mark has been a postdoc (2011-2016), a senior researcher (2016-2017), and an associate professor (2018) at Maastricht University. Before coming to Maastricht in 2011, Mark taught sociology as an assistant professor at Radboud University, was a junior researcher with the Interuniversity Centre for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS), and served as a member of the governing board and curriculum committee of the Nijmegen sociology department. In addition, Mark has been a visiting research assistant at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence (2005), a junior visiting scholar and associate member at Nuffield College, Oxford (2008, 2014-2020), a visiting scholar at the Kennedy School of Governance of Harvard (2013), and a fellow of the German College for Interdisciplinary Education Research (2013-2015). Before starting an academic career, Mark served Royal Dutch Army. He was deployed as an infantryman to Kosovo for NATO in 2000.
