Hi!
My name is Theresa Gessler and I am 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.
From 2022 until August 2025, I was a tenure-track assistant professor for Comparative Politics at European University Viadrina. Previously, I finished my MA in Political Science with a specialization on Research Methods at Central European University in Budapest and finished my PhD on the politicization of immigration and democracy at the European University Institute in Florence in December 2019. Until July 2022, I was a postdoc in political science at the University of Zurich and the Digital Democracy Lab, where I am still a fellow. Currently, I am also a guest researcher at the Zentrum für Zivilgesellschaftsforschung at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB).
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 Google Scholar page is up-to-date with my publications.
Some more things to know about me: I am a co-organizer of the Summer School for Women in Political Methodology. I have been awarded the PolMeth Europe Emerging Scholar Award for Contributions to Political Methodology at the first European PolMeth Conference in 2021. Previously, one of my papers has won the Best Presentation Award at the European Symposium on Societal Challenges in Computational Social Science (full paper). Currently, I am also a co-speaker of the Section ‘Methods of Political Science’ of the German Political Science Association.
Some of my recent publications include a paper in the European Journal of Political Research on the potential consequences of democratic backsliding for polarization with Natasha Wunsch: A new regime divide? Democratic backsliding, attitudes towards democracy and affective polarization, a paper in Political Science Research and Methods on Advocacy campaigns and gender bias in media coverage of elections with Fabrizio Gilardi and Maël Kubli, as well as two special issues of intersections. East European Journal of Society and Politics on computational social science which I co-edited and to which I contributed a paper on How opposition parties politicize democracy during autocratization. All papers are available as open access publications.
News
| Date | News |
|---|---|
| 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. |