I am professor of Empirical Political Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen, a member of the Priority Research Area Transformation of Contemporary Societies , whose chairman I was in 2014-18, and of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Immigration and Integration Research.
I have been a founding board member of the German Centre of Social Policy Research based jointly in Duisburg and Bremen since May 2021 and joined the International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy, a joint graduate programme of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies and the universities of Cologne and Duisburg-Essen, in September 2021.
As ERC mentor, I support our university applicants for ERC Starting, Consolidator and Advanced Grants, together with Rainer Meckenstock.
I am a 2019 recipient of a Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council: POLITSOLID – The Ties that Bind: Experimental Analyses of Political Solidarities in Modern Democracies. I am one out of 8 political scientists in Germany who received a Starting, Consolidator or Advanced Grant between 2007 and 2020.
As a comparative political scientist and political sociologist, I work at the intersection of political behaviour and welfare state research. I am particularly interested in how large-scale social changes manifest themselves in the politics of individuals. Thus, I conduct research on the politics of population ageing and the political behaviour of immigrants. Empirically, I use both qualitative and quantitative research with a particular focus on survey research.
I teach empirical methods for political science as well as courses related to my research interests. I enjoy using new methods of teaching and sometimes evaluate them rigorously, such as Flipped Classroom Teaching.
I have received major grants by the Funk Foundation for a project on the perception and management of neuralgic societal risks (Big Risks, with Rüdiger Kiesel and Andreas Niederberger), by the German Research Foundation for the Immigrant German Election Study I and II (with Dennis Spies and Sabrina Jasmin Mayer) and the European Research Council.
For an overview of all my projects, please see my ResearchGate profile.
You can also find out more about me in my non-academic curriculum vitae from the perspective of political sociology.