Research Fellows and Assistants
This page provides information on the current postdoctoral research fellows and research assistants working on ongoing research projects within the Department of Sociology.
Justyna Pyz 
Justyna Pyz is Gaming for Peace (GAP) Project Manager & Research Fellow. She received her MA and PhD
from the Jagiellonian University, Kraków. Her PhD dissertation dealt with intercultural and interreligious relations in
eighteenth-century India. She has also completed Postgraduate Studies for Teaching Polish Culture and Polish as a
Foreign Language at the University of Silesia in Katowice Her research includes Role Playing Games amongst secondary
school and university students and interreligious dialogue in India. She worked previously on the IRCHSS-funded project,
‘Ireland, empire and education’, based in the TCD Centre for Irish-Scottish and Comparative Studies and co-edited
Irish classrooms and British empire: Imperial contexts in the origins of modern education (Four Courts Press, 2012).
and contributed to Nobobs, Soldiers and Imperial Service: The Irish in India, an exhibition in the Long Room.
She also has experience of working in museums and with NGOs.
Contact: pyzj@tcd.ie
Simone Schneider
Simone Schneider is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Norface funded research group ‘The Paradox of Health State Futures’ (April 2015-March 2018). Simone recently received her PhD from Humboldt University Berlin on ‘Income Inequality and Life Satisfaction. An Investigation of its Cognitive Mechanisms in Germany’ (2014). She has been a member of the Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences, and a member of the European graduate program European PhD in Socio-Economic and Statistical Studies. Prior to undertaking her PhD studies Simone received her BA and MA in Social Sciences from Humboldt University Berlin. Simone has recently conducted research for the Department of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Berlin, and held a doctoral position in the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Center ‘From Heterogeneities to Inequalities’ (SFB 882) at Bielefeld University. She also worked for the German team of the ‘International Social Justice Project’ (ISJP) at Humboldt University Berlin. Her recent publications include (2012) ‘Income Inequality and its Consequences for Life Satisfaction: What Role do Social Cognitions Play’, Social Indicators Research, 106: 419-438; (2014) ‘Individual Differences in Social Comparison and its Consequences for Life Satisfaction. Introducing a Short Scale of the Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure’, Social Indicators Research, 115: 767-789 (with J. Schupp); (2015) ‘How Much Inequality of Earnings Do People Perceive as Just? The Effect of Interviewer Presence and Monetary Incentives on Inequality Preferences’, Methods, Data, Analyses, 9(1): 57-86 (with S. Liebig, M. May, C. Sauer, P. Valet); (2015) ‘Poverty Attributions and the Perceived Justice of Income Inequality: A Comparison of East and West Germany’, Social Psychological Quarterly, 78(3), 263–282 (with C. Castillo); (forthcoming), ‘Income Inequality and Subjective Wellbeing: Trends, Challenges, and Research Directions’, Journal of Happiness Studies; (forthcoming) ‘How perception and evaluation processes affect material satisfaction: An explanation of the divergence in material wellbeing between East and West Germany’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Her main areas of interest are inequality and health research, justice attitudes, and quantitative methodologies.