Research areas

Prof. Dr. Kai-Uwe Schnapp

In his research, Kai-Uwe Schnapp deals with the comparison of central institutions and organizations in Western democracies. In particular, he focuses on the role of parliaments and ministerial bureaucracies and their interaction. In addition, he has repeatedly worked on issues of electoral research, especially on state elections in Germany. Against the background of his many years as speaker of the section Empirical Methods of the German Political Science Associations (DVPW), he has published a number of volumes in the field of methods of political science. A recent edition project is a conference volume on the use of Big Data and methods of computational social science in political science. Currently, Kai-Uwe Schnapp is working in the DFG Research Unit 2104 on questions of the needs-based distribution of resources in modern democratic societies.

• Ministerial Bureaucracies
• Parliaments
• Democratic regimes
• Elites in politics and society
• Election Research
• Methods of empirical social research

PD Dr. Kamil Marcinkiewicz

In his research, Kamil Marcinkiewicz deals with different aspects of democratic election processes. He analyzes both the behavior of voters and the strategies of candidates. In addition, he also investigates the behavior of elected parliamentarians and career paths of politicians and members of the ministerial bureaucracy. He uses statistical analysis methods, including various forms of regression analysis, cluster analysis and sequence analysis. He also works with scaling methods, which he applies to both political texts and data from roll-call votes. His work mostly concerns the political system of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Länder as well as the political systems of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (especially Poland and the Czech Republic).

• Election research
• Party research
• Parliamentary research
• Political behaviour
• Germany and countries of Eastern and Central Europe

Dr. Olga Herzog

Investigation of the support of direct democratic procedures by political elites. Research focuses on the influence of power-political party contexts on fundamental attitudes towards the democratic system. This rational-strategic explanation is contrasted with a normative-ideological perspective on the support of direct democracy, which emphasizes effects of institutional socialization in the representative system and individual value-based predispositions. Data from the German Candidates Survey 2009 and 2013 (GLES sub-component 6) and the Comparative Candidates Survey (version 2016) are used in the study.

• Attitudes and behaviour of elites and masses in the political process
• Political culture
• Strategic action (rational choice)
• institutionalism, reforms of the political system

Laura Adam, M.A.

In her doctoral thesis, Laura Adam deals with the transformation of nation-state borders in the course of global migration and flight movements. Her work ties in with work on practice theory within International Relations (IR) and asks how borders are negotiated by everyday practices and re-territorialized in urban spaces. Her research focuses on how these practices transform the normative concept of state sovereignty and the relationship between state, citizens and territory contained therein. For the empirical analysis Laura Adam uses participatory and interdisciplinary research methods (including critical cartography).

• Border regime research
• Research on flight and migration
• Research on norms in the IR
• Theories of the state
• Theory of social practices
• Participatory research methods

Brian Dietrich, M.A.

In his research, Brian Dietrich primarily deals with the negotiation of needs-based justice in administrative processes. Paramount is the question of how administrative actors directly involved in the welfare state distribution process understand need and according to which principles of justice they act. To this end he works with both qualitative and quantitative methods. In addition, Brian Dietrich deals with different types of sampling and especially with the quality of non-random online surveys.

• Demand-driven surveys
• Distributive justice
• Public Service Motivation
• Conjoint Analysis
• Survey research
• Methods of empirical social research

Kea Glass, M.A.

In her dissertation and as part of her management of the Project Office for Applied Social Research at the University of Hamburg, Kea Glaß deals with community-based research. The research focuses on teaching/learning concepts in social science method training. She is concerned, for example, with the organizational framework conditions at universities in order to regularly integrate participatory research approaches into teaching and with the learning effect for students in such practice-oriented projects.

• community-based research
• Participatory research
• teaching/learning concepts
• Survey of learning outcomes

Bendix Hügelmann, M.A.

Bendix Hügelmann's research focuses on the effects of digital communication on political campaigning and voter behavior. His research focuses on the question of whether so-called "micro targeting", i.e. addressing specific target groups in the digital space, can be proven to have an influence on the formation of political awareness and opinion and, ultimately, on voter decisions. To this end, Bendix Hügelmann deals with further questions of strategic communication in the political arena. In particular, his focus of research is the use of social media by political actors. In addition, methodological questions are addressed as to how suitable empirical data material on the way in which politicians use channels as well as on their communication strategies can be collected in times of different digital channels. This also concerns questions about the connection between digital and analogue modes of addressing voters as well as theories of campaigning.

• Political Communication
• Digital election campaign
• (Digital) Campaigning
• Communication strategy
• Social media
• Micro-Targeting
• Big data analysis
• Empirical Political Science

Dominik Giese, M.Sc.

Dominik Giese's research deals with the supranational organization of politics. His empirical analyses focus on the role of the nation state in a post-national world order. In particular, he focuses on the interaction between states and regional institutions, such as the European Union or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, with respect to their mutual organization of security policy at the regional political level. In addition, Dominik Giese's theoretical focus is on current problems within the theories of international relations. He addresses these problems by reinterpreting the "Classical Realism" of the 1940s to 1970s.

• Theory of International Relations
• Classical realism
• Regionalism and integration
• Regional security policy
• European Union (EU)
• Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)