Hi!
My name is Theresa Gessler and I work as a professor for democratic political decision-making at the University of Hamburg. Most of my current research focuses on democracy, digital politics, gender and immigration, often through the lens of party politics. I primarily study European countries, especially Central-Eastern Europe. Next to classical political science methods, I use (and teach) text-as-data, webscraping and various types of digital trace data in my research.
You can find information about me, my research, publications and my teaching profile on this webpage. If you are interested in my teaching, you can also have a look at my example course on text analysis or my German language no-math introduction to quantitative methods. While I am sometimes slow with updating my webpage, I try to regularly share things on Bluesky and my ORCID and Google Scholar pages are up-to-date with my publications.
News
| Date | News |
|---|---|
| 10/2025 | On parental leave until spring 2026. |
| 09/2025 | I have started working as a Full Professor of Political Science with focus on Democratic Political Decision-Making at the University of Hamburg. Looking forward to what is ahead! |
| 07/2025 | New research project on depolarization interventions w/ Daniel Sharp, Katharina Sodoma and the Initiative Offene Gesellschaft funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. |
| 11/2024 | Kick off for our new research project: The project (funded by the Fritz-Thyssen foundation) investigates the dynamics of autocratization and opposition to it in Eastern Europe and Latin America. The project focuses on the role of democratic experience and political opportunity structures for the resilience of democracy. |
| 10/2023 | I have been selected as a ZIA - Visible Women in Science Fellow. Looking forward to meet other women* in science over the next year. |
| 06/2023 | Our book ‘Contentious Episodes in the Age of Austerity. Studying the Dynamics of Government-Challenger Interactions’ (co-edited with Abel Bojar, Swen Hutter, and Hanspeter Kriesi) is now available as a Paperback from Cambridge University Press. |
| 07/2022 | I’ve started as a tenure-track assistant professor (‘Juniorprofessur’) for Comparative Politics at European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). |
| 11/2021 | Our book ‘Contentious Episodes in the Age of Austerity’ (with Abel Bojar, Swen Hutter, and Hanspeter Kriesi) is now published at Cambridge University Press. |