Simon Birnbaum is Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in Political Science.

Before joining Södertörn University (2018) he has worked as a lecturer and researcher in the Department of Political Science, Stockholm University (2002-2016), where he defended his Ph.D. thesis in 2008. Birnbaum was a visiting graduate student at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford in 2006-2007. He has also been a fellow/postdoc researcher at Hoover Chair of Economic and Social Ethics (UCL, Louvain-la-Neuve, 2008), Stein Rokkan Centre for Social Studies (Bergen, 2009-2010), Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (Uppsala, 2011), Stockholm Resilience Centre (2010-2014), Institute for Housing and Urban Research (IBF) at Uppsala University (2017-2021), and the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm (2017-2019).

Birnbaum’s main area of expertise is normative political theory (especially theories of social justice and democratic theory) and comparative welfare state research. Central research topics addressed include basic income, justice between age groups, stakeholder participation and legitimacy, and sustainable welfare/eco-social policy. His publications include the monographs Basic Income Reconsidered: Social Justice, Liberalism and the Demands of Equality External link. (Palgrave, 2012), The Generational Welfare Contract: Justice, Institutions and Outcomes External link. (co-written with Kenneth Nelson, Tommy Ferrarini och Joakim Palme, Edward Elgar 2017), and Basinkomstens nya våg: Lärdomar från medborgarlönsexperiment i välfärdsstater External link. (co-written with Jurgen De Wispelaere and Robert Van der Veen, Institute for Futures Studies 2020).

For an overview of his publications, see Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=AN5GXRMAAAAJ&hl=sv External link.

Birnbaum is currently the director of Södertörn’s PPE program, Philosophy, Politics and Economics: www.sh.se/ppe External link.