About me

I am a political scientist in the Department of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Witten/Herdecke University and I am affiliated with the The Politics of Inequality Cluster at the University of Konstanz. Previously, I held positions at the University of Essex and University of Exeter as well as fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House and the University of Konstanz' The Politics of Inequality Cluster.

My research focuses on the relationship between power-sharing coalitions, political violence, and democratic survival. I investigate, for example, why political elites form multi-ethnic or ideologically cross-cutting coalitions, how these coalitions affect the likelihood of large-scale political violence and democratic survival, and what effects political violence has on the electoral support for anti-system parties.

I am the principal investigator of the ERC Starting Grant ‘‘Democracy, Anger, and Elite Responses’’ (DANGER). My team and I investigate how government coalitions in interwar Europe dealt with violent threats to democratic survival. We aim to learn about successful strategies to counter violent challenges and apply these lessons to contemporary European democracies.