Danish Institute for Advanced Study

The movement of public officials into private sector jobs—often referred to as the revolving door—has become an increasingly visible and consequential feature of contemporary politics. While the phenomenon is often discussed, we still know relatively little about how common it is, why firms engage in this practice, and what consequences it has for markets and business-government relations. With a focus on the United States, this talk presents new evidence on the prevalence and purpose of the revolving door, where it is now a far more widespread form of corporate political engagement than traditional tools such as lobbying or campaign contributions. Drawing on large-scale administrative and financial data, I show that firms tend to hire former public officials in response to political shocks and use them to manage their regulatory environment. Firms that engage in this practice subsequently receive more government contracts and are less likely to face regulatory enforcement actions. The talk will close with a discussion of the implications for other contexts, including Denmark and Europe, and what these patterns mean for how we understand the evolving relationship between business and the state.About Benjamin C. K. EgerodBenjamin Egerod is an assistant professor of business and government at the Copenhagen Business School and an affiliate fellow at the Stigler Center, UChicago Booth School of Business. His research focuses on business-government relations with a focus on how firms interact with political decision-makers in all branches of government. His work is published or forthcoming in The Journal of Politics, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, and British Journal of Political Science among other outlets.Venue: DIAS Auditorium, Krogene V, SDU OdenseOpen for all - no registration needed 

Bacterial viruses (bacteriophages) have a significant impact on marine prokaryotic mortality, diversity, and biogeochemical cycling. They do this by infecting and lysing cells, which release labile dissolved organic matter and stimulate the mineralization of inorganic nutrients. The sheer abundance of oceanic viruses results in ~1029 viral infections per day, causing the release of 108–109 tonnes of carbon per day from the biological pool, which are potentially available for recycling by prokaryotes. Through their actions of cell lysis, bacteriophages therefore play major roles on marine carbon and nutrient cycling. The efficient bacterial mortality caused by marine bacteriophages can also be exploited in disease control. In aquaculture, antibiotics are currently used to treat bacterial infections, despite serious concerns about the development of bacterial antibiotic resistance. Application of bacteriophages has been suggested as a strategy to control disease outbreaks in aquaculture, we aim at developing novel phage-based strategies for disease prophylaxis and treatment of outbreaks with fish pathogens in aquaculture.In this presentation, I will present our work on the role of bacteriophages in driving marine biogeochemical cycling and discuss the potential and challenges of using bacteriophages for disease control in aquaculture.  About Mathias MiddelboeMathias Middelboe is a professor in marine viral ecology at the Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen and University of Southern Denmark. He earned his PhD in aquatic microbial ecology from the University of Copenhagen in 1994 and established in 1997 a research group with a focus on the role of bacterial viruses (bacteriophages) in marine environments (water column and sediments). He is especially interested in exploring how interactions between bacteriophages and bacteria drive phage and host diversity and evolution, and in resolving the role of bacteriophages in marine biogeochemical cycling. His research also includes more applied aspects of phage–bacteria interactions, exploring the potential and challenges of using phages to control pathogenic bacteria in aquaculture.VenueThe DIAS Auditorium, SDU Campus OdenseThis event is open for all. No registration needed.

We live in anthropocene. Human activities dominate all aspects of biogeochemistry on the planet. Particular for nitrogen this is visible in our coastal waters, where we witness a collapse of the ecosystem. The reason for this is decades with elevated nutrient loadings in combination with overfishing and climate change. Today, the only significant human source of nutrients is our industrial production of animals. Every second, 1.3 pigs are born in Denmark, and we are among the most intensively farmed nations in the world with about 63 percent farmland. Currently, a ‘Green deal’ is under implementation, that will change our landscape significantly over the coming years. The aim is to reduce farmland by 15 percent, and most likely 20 to 25 percent. Nitrogen loadings will be reduced by 1/3 and over the next 100 years we can hope that our coastal ecosystems are restored.In the lecture, I will present the mechanisms for eutrophication and other press factors on the sea, the development since year 1900, and a forecast for the ‘Green deal’ and our landscape and coastal ecosystems. About Stiig Markager Stiig Markager is professor in marine ecology and biogeochemistry at Aarhus University, Institute for Ecoscience. He received his master degree from University of Copenhagen in 1987 and a Ph.D. from Aarhus University in 1992. His research topics are aquatic ecology in both freshwater and marine systems, and he has studied aquatic ecology from high Arctic lakes to the blue oceans, e.g. on the third Danish Galathea expedition in 2006/7. Focus has been on growth and ecophysiology of aquatic plants, bio-optics, dissolved organic matter and eutrophication. Stiig Markager pioneered the efforts of establishing relationships between nutrient loadings and the state of coastal marine ecosystems, which today is constitute the scientific basis for the Danish water actions plans. Over the years, public dissemination has become an important part of his job, and in 2024 Stiig Markager was the 7. most used expert in Danish medias. In 2021 he was victim of the first SLAPP case aimed at a scientist in Denmark when the farmers organization sued him with allegations of harming the reputation of Danish farmers, when claiming that they were the source of nitrogen pollution. Stiig Markager also has a voice in the debate for academic freedom and has received several prices for his struggle for a healthy marine environment.VenueThe DIAS Auditorium, SDU Campus OdenseThis event is open for all. No registration needed

Is behavioural science just common sense? Just another word for “nudging”? Only about individual behaviour change?The answer to all three is no. While common sense relies on intuition and anecdote, behavioural science uses systematic research to uncover how people think, feel, and act—often in ways that are counterintuitive or invisible to us. It examines the roles of unconscious biases, habits, social norms, and environmental cues, and has consistently shown that what “seems obvious” is not always effective. For instance, simply providing information about health or climate issues rarely leads to lasting behaviour change. Instead, strategies such as habit formation, social support, and policy changes that enhance access tend to be more impactful—and often more so than nudging alone. This lecture will explore how behavioural science can support multidisciplinary efforts to improve both human and planetary health. I will share conceptual and methodological contributions, illustrated with examples from past, current, and planned research projects undertaken at DRIVEN (Danish Centre for Motivation and Behaviour Science; https://www.sdu.dk/en/forskning/driven). About Nikos NtoumanisNikos Ntoumanis is Professor of Motivation and DIAS Chair in Health. Originally from Greece, Nikos has spent most of his adult life in the UK and Australia, working in various universities. In 2021, he joined the University of Southern Denmark (SDU), where he established DRIVEN – the Danish Centre for Motivation and Behaviour Science – within the Department of Sport Sciences and Clinical Biomechanics. His research focuses on the personal and contextual factors that foster motivation for sustained behaviour change. His work spans applied research on physical activity and health behaviour change in community and clinical settings, basic research on the regulation of life goals, and both basic and applied research on motivation in educational, workplace, and pro-environmental contexts. Nikos is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the British Psychological Society, and the UK’s Academy of Social Sciences.Venue: DIAS Auditorium, Krogene V, SDU OdenseOpen for all - no registration needed 

Biologists have relatively recent realised that no organism is alone – but rather they exist as a tightly interacting community that consists of a host scaffold, and uncountable numbers of associated microbial partners living on, and in it. Given the remarkable range of ways that microbes can affect their hosts, we are starting to realise that it is not possible to fully understand how life works without integrating information from both parts of the relationship. And when done so, we often reach quite different insights, about life in general, but also our own species.About Tom Gilbert Tom Gilbert is Professor of Palaeogenomics at the Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, and Director of the DNRF Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics. Tom received his BA (Biological Sciences) and DPhil (Molecular Evolution/ancient DNA) from Oxford University, and then spent 2 years at the University of Arizona working on untangling the origin of the HIV-1 epidemic. In 2005 he moved as a Marie Curie Fellow to the University of Copenhagen, where he has been employed ever since in variously the Niels Bohr Institute, Biological Institute, Natural History Museum of Denmark, and since 2019, the Globe Institute. While for most of his career his work studied the genomic basis of evolution of animals and plants, over the past decade his interests have turned to how microbial partners shape this relationship, and what consequences this might have to us.VenueThe DIAS Auditorium, SDU Campus OdenseThis event is open for all. No registration needed.

“Philosophizing,” argued the existential philosopher, Karl Jaspers (1932) “starts with our situation”. This lecture introduces key concepts, frameworks and figurations in existential media studies by setting out from a moment of interrelated crises in which advanced technologies such as “AI” (artificial intelligence) are hailed as the inevitable solution to all of humanity’s problems. In the digital limit situation (Lagerkvist 2020, 2022)—as the technology is entrusted to be salvaging us or feared to outperform and render us extinct—“the self” is simultaneously encroached from all sides. In a curious way, new “subjects” are meanwhile envisioned to be born inside the models. This raises a series of pressing questions: What conceptions of the self are actually being forged within this powerful socio-technical imaginary? What norms for being human in the world do advanced technologies bring about, challenge or reactivate? And how can we envision selves and technologies relationally as well as within limits, for promoting an existentially sustainable future with machines? About Amanda LagerkvistAmanda Lagerkvist is Professor of media and communication studies, PI of the Uppsala Hub for Digital Existence and guest researcher at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society (CRS)  at Uppsala University. She has been appointed Core Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Study, The University of Helsinki, for the academic year of 2025-2026. As Wallenberg Academy Fellow (2014-2018) she founded the young field of existential media studies. Her work has spanned the existential dimensions of digital memories, death online and lifeworlds of biometrics. She currently explores intersections of datafication, disability and selfhood; and the ambivalent AI imaginary and its relationship to both futures and endings (with funding from the Bank of Sweden and WASP-HS). In her monograph Existential Media: A Media Theory of the Limit Situation (OUP, 2022) she introduces Karl Jaspers’ existential philosophy of limit situations for media theory. She is the co-editor of Relational Technologies: In Search of the Self Across Datafied Lifeworlds with Dr. Jacek Smolicki (Bloomsbury, Thinking/Media Series) and she is currently under contract for her new monograph Dismedia: Technologies of the Extraordinary Self with The University of Michigan Press.VenueThe DIAS Auditorium, SDU Campus OdenseThis event is open for all. No registration needed.