Welcome! I’m a senior research scientist at the Institute of Sociology (SoU), Czech Academy of Sciences. I’m also Co-director and Lecturer of the Comparative History of Ideas (CHID) Prague Program of the University of Washington, Seattle. I received B.A. degrees from the University of Washington in Seattle (1998), M.A. from Boston College (2000), and PhD (2008) from the New School for Social Research in New York.

This site brings together my research conducted in different academic fields and institutions, which is very much needed given the interdisciplinary nature of my work.

What’s new?

While continuing my research at CERGE-EI, in 2019 I also re-joined the Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences, where I was Senior Researcher from 2006-2014. There, I’m conducting research on educational stratification and inequality, including new work on the role of education gaps on Czech voting behavior.

I am also creating new animated data visualization tools in cooperation with the Institute of Sociology AV CR and with Datlab and Econlab. Those new software tools, intended to better depict the structure of inequalities in Czech education, are being developed as part of the AV21 project “Effective Public Policy and Contemporary Society,” coordinated by Doc. Daniel Munich.

Starting in 2019, at CERGE-EI I am also principal investigator of a new standard research project on gender gaps in Czech education and the labor market, funded by the Czech Science Foundation. It’s also my second project aiming to increase collaboration between economists and sociologists at the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Click here for my obituary to Petr Mateju, a truly wonderful Czech sociologist, co-author and friend, who passed away in June 2017.

Data from the Czech Household Panel Study publicly available

From 2014-2018, I was one of three principal investigators (along with Pat Lyons and Tomáš Katrňák) for the project Dynamics of Change of Czech Society, which implemented the Czech Household Panel Study. The Czech Household Panel Study is one of the largest social surveys ever conducted in the Czech Republic, and is being wonderfully administered by Michaela Röschová and others at the Institute of Sociology. It involves annual panel surveys over four years, from 2015-2018; in the first wave, 5159 households and over 13,000 household members, including children, participated. Future waves are being planned.

In early 2017, data from the first wave was made publicly available. In February 2018, data from the second wave was made publicly available. It is planned that future waves will be made available in one roughly one year intervals. You can access and download the data online at the Czech Social Science Data Archive, after free registration.

Contact

Email: michael.smith@email.cz or michael.smith@cerge-ei.cz or smitm272@uw.edu

Phone: +420 737 813 807

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