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Since autumn 2021, I am a PhD candidate at the University of Mannheim’s Center for Doctoral Studies in Social and Behavioral Sciences (CDSS) (Political Science Track), affiliated with the Chair for Empirical Democracy Research.

Within my dissertation, supervised by Prof. Richard Traunmüller, I am researching the democratic consequences of climate change related emotions and attitudes in three papers. I first demonstrate that an increase in climate concern is causally related to a reduction of democratic satisfaction. Second, I investigate whether this decline in satisfaction is a mediating step towards a decrease in support for democracy. Both of these papers are based on German panel data. Third, I use an original double list experiment investigating whether citizens are willing to support undemocratic measures to further their own climate political agenda – and how this is mediated by varying emotions elicited by climate change and the government’s climate (in)action.

Simultaneously, I am finishing up papers stemming from my recent research assistant position in the project Political Conflict Regulation and Social Cohesion within the Research Institute Social Cohesion at the Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main and the adjacent project How do we want to talk to each other? Survey experiments about Freedom of Speech and the regulation of Hate Speech. Here, we study both the determinants of a lack of subjective freedom of speech and its consequences such as self-censorship, radical-right vote and declining democratic satisfaction.

More generally, my substantive research interests revolve around how citizens’ attitudes and preferences are formed, how they are influenced by party politics, morals and emotions – and how, in turn, the same citizens shape democratic processes and the perception of democracy in general. Finally, I also have great interest in survey and survey experiment methodology and political psychology.

My work has been published in in the journals Politische Vierteljahresschrift / German Political Science Quarterly and VOLUNTAS and is under review at other journals. For the co-authored paper The Potential of Open Lists for the Election of Women to the German Bundestag. Results of a Survey Experiment, we were awarded the 1st prize of the Fritz-Thyssen-Foundation Award for essays in the social sciences. I have served as reviewer for manuscripts submitted to Political Studies Review.

I received my M.A. in Political Science at Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich, with my thesis consisting of a survey experiment investigating general attitudes towards prenatal genetic testing and the moderating effects exercised by moralized framing and individuals’ personality traits. Previously, I obtained a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Applied Sciences Bremen. Meanwhile, I also worked as a free-lance journalist and photo-/videographer for different newspapers, online outlets and the German public broadcaster funk.

A more comprehensive CV can be found here and more information about my current work-in-progress here. Please get in touch if you have any questions about my work or might want to collaborate on projects aligning with my research interests.