Hendrik Erz | Hendrik Erz

A picture of me Hi, I'm Hendrik! I'm a PhD Student at the Institute for Analytical Sociology (IAS) at Linköping University, Sweden.

Curriculum Vitae

Political Sociology • Computational Social Sciences • Analytical Sociology • Computational Text Analysis

My dissertation is on economic policymaking in U.S. Congress. I try to understand how individual-level interactions in Congress have contributed to changes in the economic framework of the U.S. and the shared understanding of the economy. My aim is to allow sociological text analysis to use speech acts as a tool of analysis.

Academic Research

I am affiliated with the Institute for Analytical Sociology (IAS), Linköping University, Sweden. My research intersects with political and economic sociology, text analysis and computational social sciences. Find out at which conferences I'll be this year, and see my blog for bits and pieces on everything academic.

Conferences 2024

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Most Recent Article: Is Generative AI Actually Useful?

Published October 31st, 2024

Abstract: Yes. Generative AI has plenty of good uses. And by now, setting it up locally with models you control and output that remains confidential is easier than ever. In this article, I share some use-cases I have found to be particularly useful, and some caveats I discovered along the way.

Open Source development

When I'm not analyzing policymaking and individual behavior in parliaments, I advocate for Open Source. Since at least 2006 I have been a user, supporter, and contributor to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).

My main project is Zettlr. It is a "one-stop publication workbench" targeted at students and researchers in the arts and humanities. I started working on it in 2017 and have been the project lead ever since.

After the Twitter-exodus began, I started the go-to list for finding your peers, Academics on Mastodon. It lists hundreds of people from dozens of fields and Mastodon instances so that you can orient yourself in this new social media.

You can find more info on my involvement with software on my GitHub profile.