BRIDGE

Bridging rural-urban individual divides in outlooks and political Engagement

This research project will run between 2026 and 2031. It is funded by a €2 million ERC Consolidator Grant and will be hosted by the University of Cambridge. I have these current vacancies:

Research Fellow (Place Effects): closed on 3 August 2026.

Research Fellow (Social Networks), closed on 3 August 2026.

Research Assistant, closed on 6 August 2026.

Project administrator, link, closing on 25 August 2026.

Polarisation between urban and rural areas is an important contemporary societal cleavage. Existing research finds that rural populations often hold more conservative views, while urban residents are generally associated with progressive positions on issues such as immigration, cosmopolitanism, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ rights. Urban populations are also more likely to acknowledge anthropogenic climate change and support decarbonisation policies. However, critical questions about the causes and consequences of this observed divide remain unresolved.

Is this division primarily attributable to compositional effects, that is, the uneven distribution of people with different demographic characteristics like education, age, and gender? Or does the context of place itself influence the formation of social, cultural, and political outlooks? If the latter, what place characteristics and specific mechanisms drive this contextual effect? Moreover, what strategies might mitigate the growing urban-rural divide, especially on contentious and highly topical issues such as migration, gender rights, and climate policy? BRIDGE will significantly advance our understanding of urban-rural societal polarisation by answering these questions.

BRIDGE innovatively asserts that urban-rural outlook polarisation originates from early-life environmental influences on individuals and is primarily shaped by the scale, density, distance, and diversity of social interactions in different settlements. Its signature transdisciplinary empirical approach will combine leverage causal inference research methods, Big Data, randomised controlled trials and in-depth qualitative fieldwork. The project will develop evidence-based strategies to mitigate polarisation on divisive topics.

The project includes 4 core Work Packages. WP2 will causally investigate the drivers of urban-rural polarisation in individual outlooks, using state of the art techniques to disentangle composition from place effects. WP3 will bridge into computational social sciences to study the specific role that social networks play in shaping individual outlooks. WP4 will draw on behavioural sciences insights to design actionable policy strategies that can help mitigate urban-rural outlook polarisation. Finally, WP5 will link outlook polarisation to electoral divides. The project will primarily focus on countries in Europe and North America, although, time and data permitting, we may try to broaden our geographical scope.

At any time, the team will include Davide, two postdoc Research Fellows, one Research Assistant, and one Project Manager. We will also organise three international reseach workshops and host a Visiting Fellowship Scheme. Its goal is to attract two international visiting scholars every year and establish a global transdisciplinary research network of scholars working on place and political divides. 

Stay tuned for updates!