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Professor Jens Hoff

Former Visiting Fellow

Professor
Jens Hoff

Former Visiting Fellow

Profile Contents

About

Jens Hoff is a professor in comparative politics at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and specialises in the study of information and communication technology (ICT), power and democracy. His research has focused on the importance of ICT for political institutions and processes as well as for political culture and identity. Within the broader field of comparative politics he has done research in governance, and citizen and user participation. During the last 20 years Jens Hoff has participated in a large number of national and international research projects. Since 1996 he has led the project Democracy from below (with Professor Jurgen Goul Andersen), and two projects in relation to the parliamentary initiated Danish Power Study: IT, Power and Democracy, and Who Governs Revisited (the last with Associate Professor Henrik Bang). From 1998 till 2003 he was the chairman of a European research network on Government and Democracy in the Information Age (COST Action A14), involving around 70 researchers from 15 European countries. Jens Hoff was a director of the Centre for Research in Public Organization and Management (COS) from 1996 to 1998, and Director of Studies at the Department of Political Science, Copenhagen University from 1999 to 2002. He is the chief-editor of the Danish academic journal Politik, on the editorial board of Information Polity, and regularly does article reviews for the journals Information Polity, Political Studies, Information, Communication and Society, European Journal of Political Research, Scandinavian Political Studies and Politik, and book reviews for Kluwer Publishers, IOS Press and DJF Forlag. He also regularly reviews project proposal for the British and Norwegian research councils.

Currently he is engaged in a major Danish research project on Media and Democracy in the Network Society (MODINET) both as a member of the steering group and as an active researcher. In the project he is directing a working group on Democracy, Governance and New Public Spheres, which has produced two books and a series of articles and working papers. His own project concerns the shaping of digital political communication in a local Danish context, i.e. the relation between the democratic norms of different stakeholder groups, and their uses of web-based means of political communication.

His publication list includes more than 100 publications. Among his recent publications are: Hans Krause Hansen & Jens Hoff (eds) Digital Governance://Networked Societies. Creating authority, community and identity in a globalized world (Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur/ NORDICOM, in print); Jens Hoff (ed.) (2006) Internet, Governance and Democracy. Democratic Transitions from Asian and European Perspectives (Copenhagen: NIAS Press); Jens Hoff & Kresten Storgaard (eds) (2005) Informationsteknologi og demokratisk innovation (Information technology and democratic innovation) (Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur); Jens Hoff & Flemming Bjerke (2005) Fences and Gates in Cyberspace. Is the Internet Becoming a Threat to Democracy? Information Polity 10:1-11; Jens Hoff (ed.) (2004) Danmark som informationssamfund. Muligheder og barrierer for politik og demokrati (Denmark as an information society. Possibilities and barriers for politics and democracy) (Aarhus Universitetsforlag: Aarhus); Jurgen Goul Andersen & Jens Hoff (2001) Democracy and Citizenship in Scandinavia (Palgrave: Hampshire & New York).

Positions at the OII

  • Visiting Fellow, May 2006 - July 2006