Alexander Zahl-Thanem has a Master’s degree in Sociology from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, and has been employed at Ruralis since 2015. He specializes in quantitative methods and has worked on various research projects involving collection, facilitation, and analysis of survey and register data. Zahl-Thanem has worked on various topics within rural sociology, including social inequality, immigration, health, and sociocultural conditions in agriculture. He is also the project leader for the biennial survey “Trends in Norwegian Agriculture”. Currently, Zahl-Thanem is doing a Ph.D. at the Department of Sociology and Political Science at NTNU, where he uses register data to analyse social and spatial inequalities in education and occupation among youth and young adults in Norway.