M. Firat, Dr

I am a postdoctoral researcher in Economic and Social History at the University of Groningen, working on the ERC project Coping with decline: A socio-historical analysis of population decline and community welfare in Europe, 1950-2022 (DEPOP). Before joining the University of Groningen in 2025, I worked at Radboud University as a PhD candidate from 2021 to 2025, earning my PhD degree in Sociology in 2026. During my PhD, I studied social inequality in retirement from a life course and comparative perspective, as part of the project Understanding old-age inequality: The impact of work, family and health trajectories on post-retirement economic, social and psychological well-being across Europe. I hold an MA and MSc degree in (Social) Psychology from Bogazici University (2019) and the University of Alberta (2021) and a BA degree in Translation and Interpreting Studies from Bogazici University (2015). My research interests include the social history of population and welfare decline, the sociology of life course, retirement, and welfare state, and the social psychology of intergroup relations, migration, and integration. I am also interested in meta-science, the study of science itself, especially in the issues of replication, generalizability, and forecasting.