I am an Associate Professor of Political Communication in the Department of Communication Science, and co-Director of the Resilience, Security and Civil Unrest (ReSCU) R&I Lab at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. I received my PhD in Political Science from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Before joining the Department of Communication Science, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Zurich, and visiting researcher of the Departments of Political Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and the University of Oxford.
My research interest comprise the areas of political communication, political behavior, and computational social science. I am motivated by key societal challenges that face democracies today, such as the crisis of representative democracy and increasing political fragmentation. Specifically, I apply advanced computational approaches to study the communication and rhetoric of politicians, and how this affects political decision making and its electoral consequences in multi-party systems.
In my current work, I examine the legitimacy of political decision-making. In one project, I study the electoral ramifications of (un)compromising politicians. This research project is funded through an Innovation Grant (VENI) by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). In another project, I look at the perceived legitimacy of goverment communication, which is funded through a National Science Agenda Grant by NWO. Moreover, as part of the OPTED H2020 consortium funded by the European Research Council, I work on methods to compare textual data in multilangual settings.
For more information about my research project, media appearances, teaching, and open science materials, please visit my personal website.
