Shiwei Chen

Sociologist at Vrije University Amsterdam

Current Projects

From exception to norm: Evaluating the contribution of Open Science Communities to the transition to an Open Science research culture

(2026-2028)

Open Science Communities (OSCs) are widely regarded as essential for making Open Science (OS) practices and principles the norm. But is this assumption correct? This project is the first to investigate whether and how OSCs help to embed OS into research culture and practice in the Netherlands by comparatively examining how OS is constructed in discourses of OSC leaders, members, and non-members. Based on our empirical findings, we will develop an evidence-based model that clarifies the roles of OSCs in the culture shift towards OS, as well as formulate recommendations for OS policy and guidelines directed at OSCs.

Past Projects (selected)

Navigating the Road to Societal Impact

(2022-2026)

  • Longitudinal mixed-methods research (ethnography and survey-based QCA) examining how large interdisciplinary programs create societal impact in the domains of healthcare, diversity, and inclusion in urban life.
  • A new angle for investigating tensions in interdisciplinary collaborations, framing them as diagnostic moments that reveal infrastructural (re)arrangements.
  • The findings from this research also informed the production of a science documentary.

Research for Everyone: new ways to reach a broader audience for healthcare survey research

(2024-2025)

  • Co-produced health screening surveys with social organizations and patients, tailoring the materials to varying levels of Dutch proficiency.

Understanding Singapore’s Experiences of Access to Health Care

(2022-2024)

  • Produced new insights to how Singaporeans use public, private, and telemedicine-based primary care providers
  • Reported patients’ perspectives on assessing primary care quality
  • Provided policy recommendations to foster open science in the Singapore context

Transitions to Practice

(2018-2022)

  • Reported that junior doctors used social comparison when self-evaluating their own abilities, which helped them to better transition from medical students to doctors
  • Introduced the first formal evaluation of medical student assistantships in Singapore
  • Improved “preparedness for practice” from an infrastructural perspective

The social basis of COVID-19 vaccines: a qualitative study of the vaccination decision-making process in Singapore

(2021-2022)

  • Contributed to high visibility anthropological research on using alienation as a social diagnostics for our time
  • Reconceptualized the relationship between crisis and alienation to better understand future public health crises
  • Contributed to on-going effort of conceptualizing vaccine hesitancy as social construction of safety and danger

General Practitioner Recruitment and Retention in China

(2020-2022)

  • Published a first review on both Chinese and English literature on the most recent primary care reform in China
  • Identified multiple policies, pathways and programmes focused on expanding GP recruitment
  • Provided suggestions for improving the benefits and rewards for GPs and how to promote recruitment to the more rural or less attractive areas
  • Informed a WHO guideline on developing universal health coverage

Good Death and End-of-life Care Preferences: Perspectives from older Singaporeans

(2021-2022)

  • This qualitative study examined older Singaporeans’ perspectives on good death and their plans and preferences for end-of-life
  • Contributed to policy recommendations to encourage earlier end-of-life care planning

Nation-in-Action: Making Chinese in the Rural Borderland between China and North Korea

(2014-2019)