(SELECTION OF PROJECTS I HAVE BEEN INVOLVED OR I AM CURRENTLY INVOLVED IN)

Preference Matcher

PreferenceMatcher is an academic consortium involving political scientists, social psychologists, computer scientists, and communication specialists from the University of Zurich, University of Twente, Cyprus University of Technology and Oxford Brookes University who collaborate in developing e-literacy tools designed to enhance voter education.

“Change Through Crises? Solidarity and De-solidarization in Germany and Europe” (short: SoliKris)

European countries have experienced a set of severe crises over the past years. The research project Solikris (Change through Crisis? Solidarity and desolidarization in Germany and Europe) is based on two main assumptions: First, despite the lack of a causal connection between the various crises, there is a significant overlap and reinforcement of their effects and influence on the society, politics, and the behaviour of European states to each other. Second, all these crises have one thing in common. They have influenced the feeling of solidarity within the society as it presents itself among individuals, social groups and to an extreme form also European states. The drop of solidarity could lead to an extreme desolidarization. However, in some cases, the crises lead to increasing solidarity. This is a question that needs to be treated empirically. The central research question of Solikris is: What are positive and negative effects on solidarity within a society and between European countries that have brought the various crises since 2006? This question allows us to identify positive and negative influences and the conditions and circumstances under which they were made possible.

Funded by: Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) Duration: 1.12.2017 – 30.11.2020 SoliKris is a collaborative research project bringing together more than a dozen social scientists from the GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, the University of Heidelberg, and the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.

Political Parties and Interest Groups in Southern Europe. (2016 -)

The project’s main goal is to analyze the relationship between parties and interest groups using a comparative and longitudinal approach. Third-wave Southern European democracies (Greece, Portugal, and Spain) will be used to address the following questions: How have political parties interacted with interest groups? What is the evolution of this linkage over time, in particular after the emergence of the recent economic crisis? Which factors can explain party-group interactions? How can we explain variation across different parties and countries? The empirical research is based on extensive data collection which includes not only the organizational dimension but also an examination of leadership profile, as well as new data collected through a questionnaire to interest groups and elite interviews. The final aim is to assess potential causes of party-group linkages, considering sociological, institutional and actors’ strategy as the main explanatory factors.

Designing & Operating an Infrastructure for the Empirical Inquiry of Political & Social Radicalism in Greece (2012-2015) This project aimed to empirically record political and social radicalism in Greece during the economic crisis years. Data have been collected by telephone interviews conducted in January 2015 prior to the 25 January 2015 Parliamentary Elections.

Access to data: Political & Social Radicalism in Greece: First Round Political & Social Radicalism in Greece: Second Round Political & Social Radicalism in Greece: Third Round

INTUNE: Integrated and United? A Quest for Citizenship in an Ever Closer Europe (2006-09) The IntUne project was a four-year project which officially started on the 1st September 2005 within the scope of the 6th Framework Programme and was coordinated by the University of Siena. The project aimed at studying the changes in the scope, nature, and characteristics of citizenship that result from the process of the deepening and enlargement of the European Union. During that time I was working as a research assistant for the Greek team, for the research area of the project concerning national elites.