About
Florian Kühnert
About Me
About 6 years ago I moved from Germany to the Netherlands, two countries that you might think are very similar. But as small as the Netherlands are, as many particularities there are. Unfortunately, inaccesibility of the political and societal spheres is one of these. For non-dutch speaking people, accessing basic or detailed insights into these worlds is difficult, making deep democracy difficult.
In Tales from the Polder, I want to share exactly that: My own insights from living in the Netherlands, but also experiences that go beyond borders of countries.
The word “tales” is a deliberate choice. This site is not about facts, it is not objective. I dare say: Nothing is. Posts on this website will be highly influenced by my positionality as a white, genderqueer person from Europe. “Tales” captures this irrationality and subjectivity beautifully.
Born in 1998, I attended high-school in Fulda, Germany. For everyone who has never heard about this place, here are the things you need to know: Fulda is a beautiful, baroque city which is highly conservative and catholic. On the other hand, it is also very good in regionality of products and, due to the university of applied science, also has a progressive side. Growing up queer in Fulda was as ambivalent as the city itself.
In 2017, my mother died of an alcoholism-related accident. Together with losing most of my family by now, this has shaped me greatly and I learned a great many things about what it means to be human.
In 2018, I moved to Nijmegen in the Netherlands to pursue my studies in Psychology. I first followed a path to neuroscience, in which I also wrote my bachelor thesis on learning with intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation.
After a year in a statistics master, I noticed that my interests lie more with society as a whole, on macro, meso and micro levels. The same holds for the practice of mixed methods. In my studies, my main interests are meritocracy, resilience and more. In 2024 I worked within the Agenda Veerkrachtige en Weerbare Samenleving of the Ministery of Social Affairs and Employment, and expect to graduate in 2025.
- 2017 Graduation Highschool
- 2018 - 2022: B.Sc. Psychology
- 2022 - 2023: M.Sc. Methodology and Statistics (unfinished)
- 2023 - 2025: M. Sc. Social Sciences for a Digital Society
- More info on my LinkedIn (click here)
Projects and Publication
2020: FUNK (ARD and ZDF) documentary on growing up with an alcoholic mother
Bachelor Project: van Lieshout, L., Colizoli, O., Holman, T., Kühnert, F., & Bekkering, H. (2023, June 15). Rewards can be costly: extrinsic rewards are not beneficial during autonomous learning. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/2ga8j
Others: Several modelling projects with Ilvy Maijen, Femke Koning, Jesse van den Berg , Jörg Brücker and more
