I hold a BA and MA in Political Science from the University of Bremen. Since 2011 I am a Research Assistant and PhD candidate at the University of Oldenburg.  Currently I am working on my PhD project regarding the impact of compulsory voting on individual behaviour.

Forschung und Lehre

My research is focused on political participation in general and on individual voting behavior in particular. Additionally I am interested in experimental research methods.

As a Research Assistant at the University of Oldenburg I taught courses in Political Theory, Introduction to the political system of Germany, and different Parts of the “Lehrforschung” including introduction to laboratory experimental tools such as ztree or DPTE. 

Dissertationsvorhaben

Compulsory Voting and Individual Voting Behavior. An Experimental Study (Working title)

Abstract. Declining turnout is often considered as a problem to the functioning of western-style democracies. Scholars in the tradition of Arendt Lijphart (1997) argue that compulsory voting could help to overcome obstacles accompanied with low turnout rates. In my dissertation I raise three different research questions with respect to the possible effects of mandatory voting laws on individual voting behavior. (1) How does compulsory voting affect the individual decision to turn out in elections with asymmetrical distributed information? (2) How does compulsory voting affect individual willingness to invest in costly information? (3) How does compulsory voting affect individual information processing in electoral campaigns?