Congratulations to Fijnanda van Klingeren and Lukas Lohove on the successful completion of their DPhils in Sociology

The Department of Sociology would like to congratulate Fijnanda van Klingeren and Lukas Lohove who have successfully completed their DPhils in Sociology.

Fijnanda van Klingeren's thesis 'Measuring the Effect of Heterogeneity and Trust on Cooperation in Common-Pool Resources' was completed under the supervision of Nan Dirk de Graaf. Her thesis looks at the influence of inequality on cooperation in common pool resources, making use of contextualised laboratory experiments, agent-based models and detailed common land datasets. Forests, fishing grounds, pastures and fresh water supplies are all natural resources subject to over exploitation and Van Klingeren hopes that her research will provide new insights into the use and preservation of common pool resources.

Lukas Lohove’s thesis ‘Persisting or Dropping Out: A Grounded Theory of School-to-Work Transitions of Young Migrants in China’ was completed under the supervision of Rachel Murphy and David Kirk. In his thesis, Lohove seeks to explain why some young people persist, whereas others drop off their pathways beyond compulsory education. It draws on interviews with young migrants and their parents and finds that an empirically grounded, multidimensional concept, ‘interest-environment fit’, and its link to motivation explain persistence and dropping out on all three major pathways beyond middle school: the academic, the vocational school and the work track. The analysis highlights that the decision-making phase in middle school is crucial for understanding young people’s trajectories beyond middle school graduation.

We wish them every success with their future careers and look forward to following their achievements.