About me

Currently, I am a tenure-track assistant professor for Comparative Politics at European University Viadrina. Previously, I was a Postdoc at the Chair of Policy Analysis at the Department of Political Science of the University of Zurich (UZH) where I was a member of the Digital Democracy Lab which combines my favorite topic - democracy - with my favorite methods, namely computational social science and particularly text analysis. Currently, I am also a guest researcher at the Zentrum für Zivilgesellschaftsforschung at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB).

In December 2019, I defended my PhD thesis at the European University Institute in Florence in which I studied the politicization of immigration and democracy. As part of my PhD, I was also involved in the ERC research project Political Conflict in the Shadow of the Great Recession (POLCON) led by Hanspeter Kriesi. Before my PhD, I obtained an MA in Political Science from Central European University with a specialization in political research methodology and studied in Frankfurt, Madrid and Exeter during my BA in Sociology and History of Science.

Most of my current research focuses on democracy, digital politics and immigration, often through the lens of party politics. Although I study different European countries, I am particularly interested in Hungary, Poland and Central-Eastern Europe more broadly. Recently, I have also started comparative work that looks at Central-Eastern Europe and Latin America. My research and expertise has been featured on TV, radio and in newspapers (e.g. ZDF Berlin direkt, ARD Morgenmagazin, RBB Abendschau and RBB Brandenburg Aktuell, radioeins, tagesschau.de, Märkische Oderzeitung).

Methodologically, I often work with text (as data). This has led me from qualitative interviews to quantitative text analysis, webscraping and machine learning, but my work also uses other methods such as analysis of survey data and survey experiments. I do most of my work with R, but I also use Python, Stata and other tools occasionally.

I try to contribute to making political science and its methods more accessible and inclusive. Hence, I am a co-organizer of the Summer School for Women in Political Methodology and was one of the founding members of the Computational Methods Working Group at the University of Zurich. Currently, I am a co-speaker of the Section ‘Methods of Political Science’ of the German Political Science Association. I believe in the value of open science and making replication material and data available, as well as the importance of teaching for furthering science as well as its public understanding.

Personally, I enjoy hiking and spending time outdoors. I am committed to taking trains and environmentally-friendly methods of travels whenever possible.