Biography
Dr. Thomas Teekens is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Philosophy at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where he works on synthesizing the theoretical insights from various SCOOP research projects. Collaborating with Martin van Hees (VU) and Rafael Wittek and Liesbet Heyse (RUG), Thomas aims to elucidate the mechanisms that underpin the sustainability of cooperation across social settings.
Before joining the VU in Amsterdam, Thomas spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher in Groningen, where he empirically studied how different professionals in healthcare, education, and other sectors tackle complex problems together. Prior to that, Thomas completed his PhD at the Sociology Department of the RUG in 2024, with a dissertation titled Sustainable Collaboration in Care. In his research, Thomas focuses on understanding how social relationships shape cooperative efforts across organizational and disciplinary boundaries, and how such collaborations can endure over time. He is particularly interested in mechanism-based approaches that link individual behavior to larger social processes, a perspective that also informs his current contributions to the SCOOP Synthesis.
