Welcome

I am a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Political Science at the University of Bath. I previously held postdoctoral fellowships at KU Leuven and the University of Pennsylvania, as well as visiting positions at the European University Institute, the Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University. I was awarded my PhD in Political Science by ETH Zurich in 2017.

I specialize in Conflict Research and Political Behavior, with a focus on ethnic conflict, democratic innovations, and quantitative methods. In an ongoing project, I examine the consequences of restrictions of ethnic group rights for self-determination conflicts around the world using a combination of observational data and survey experiments. I also currently work on several projects related to deliberative mini-publics, a democratic innovation where a randomly selected group of citizens comes together to deliberate on policy issues. I am, in particular, interested in how mini-publics are perceived by the wider public, challenges related to recruitment, and the potential of mini-publics in ethnically divided societies.

I have done extensive research on internet voting, with a specific focus on Switzerland, a country with an extensive history with internet voting. Among other things, I have researched the effects of internet voting on electoral turnout and accidental voting errors, as well as the determinants of the usage of internet voting. Another recurrent research interest of mine are Voting Advice Applications (VAAs), including how usage of VAAs affects citizens’ political knowledge, voting preferences, and electoral behavior, but also methodological aspects related to VAA design. I am involved in PreferenceMatcher, an international consortium of researchers which produces state-of-the-art voting advice applications (VAAs) for elections in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. Our tools have been accessed by hundreds of thousands of voters.

My research has been published in leading academic journals including International Organization, British Journal of Political Science (1 and 2), European Journal of Political Research, Political Behavior, Political Communication, Government Information Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Electoral Studies, among other outlets. My work has been referenced by Avenuir Suisse, Conciliation Resources, International IDEA, RAND Corporation, SIPRI, the European Union, the OECD, and various national governments (e.g., UK and Germany). My research has received funding from the British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF).

As part of my research, I have collected new global data on self-determination movements, sovereignty referendums, and autonomy losses by ethnic groups. You can download these datasets here.