Red Couch Talks - Women in Academia

"Red Couch Talks" is an interview series initated by Prof. Dr. Vera Troeger. Vera Troeger hosts senior and junior women in academia, specifically in Political Science, and talks about their professional journey, obstacles they have faced in the field and what needs to be done to overcome issues that women in higher education still face.

In the talks, the invited female academics provide insights into their careers and give answers to the following questions:

Why and how did you become a political scientist?
What do you think is your greatest achievement academically?
How do you manage to be extremely productive and active with 4 children? Can you balance academic and family life? What’s your secret? Do you sleep at all?
On your way to becoming a successful academic did you encounter any gender-related discrimination or bias? If so, at what stage in your career, what was the nature of this?
Who helped you along the way and how?
Have you been subjected to sexual or other types of harassment and if so, how did you deal with it?
Do you think we need special measures to advance women in academia and if so what kind?
Do you think that the criteria we judge academics on (publications, citations, third party funding etc.) are fair and gender blind?
What is the advice you want to give to young women who want to become an academic?

Photo: Privat

Red Couch Talks

This is an interview series with Vera Troeger

Red Couch Talk - Alex Scacco

Red Couch Talk with Alex Scacco

Alex Scacco is a Senior Research Fellow and Vice Director of the Institutions and Political Inequality unit at the WZB. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University and previously worked as an Assistant Professor at New York University.

Alex's work focuses on the causes and consequences of individual decisions in conditions of extreme risk, where potential costs are high and benefits uncertain. Why, for example, do individuals choose to participate in communal violence, to migrate across the Sahara and the Mediterranean, or to trust outgroup members in contexts of recurring conflict? How does intergroup conflict affect political attitudes and social cohesion?

She addresses these questions using observational and experimental methods in a range of settings in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Her methodological interests focus on improving measurement in field-based research and knowledge aggregation in social science.

Her book, Anatomy of a Riot (forthcoming 2024, Cambridge University Press), draws on original survey and interview data to unpack the relationship between poverty, membership in neighborhood-level social networks and the decision to participate in a series of deadly religious riots in contemporary Nigeria.

Alex has done fieldwork in Kenya, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda, and is currently a principal investigator in ongoing projects in Israel and Lebanon.

Link to the Lecture3Go Video : Red Couch Talk with Alex Sacco on 7 July 2022.

Red Couch Talk -Lena Schaffer

Red Couch Talk with Lena Schaffer

Lena Schaffer is a Professor of Political Science and International & Transnational Relations at the University of Luzern. From February until September 2023, she was a guest professor at the Excellence Cluster “The Politics of Inequality” of the University of Konstanz.
Before joining the University of Luzern, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Konstanz (2014-2016) and in the “International Political Economy” group at the Center for Comparative and International Studies (CIS) and the Institute for Environmental Decisions (IED) at ETH Zürich (2011-2014). Her postdoctoral research projects focused on the spatial and temporal dynamics in climate change policy-making, the link between climate change and migration as well as on individual trade preferences. From 2006-2011, she completed her dissertation on the interdependencies in decision-making between local governments within the United States with a special focus on voluntary climate change policy at ETH Zürich.

Research Interests
In her research activities, she is interested in how global problems (climate change) and enhanced interdependence (globalization) that transcend the traditional sphere of the nation state impact on politics and governance aspects within and between nations. In both of the overarching research domains of globalization and climate change, she combines insights from international political economy, comparative politics and theories of regulation.

Link to the Lecture3Go Video : Red Couch Talk with Lena Schaffer on 3rd June 2022.

Red Couch Talk - Heike Kluever

Red Couch Talk with Heike Kluever

Heike Klueveris a Full Professor and Chair of Comparative Political Behavior at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She previously held positions as Full Professor and Chair of Comparative Politics at the University of Hamburg, as Professor of Empirical Political Science at the University of Bamberg, as Junior Professor at the University of Konstanz and as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Nuffield College at the University of Oxford. She received my PhD from the University of Mannheim.

Her research interests include Comparative European Politics, Political Parties, Coalition Governments, Interest groups, Political Representation as well as Quantitative Text Analysis.

Link to the Video " Red Couch Talk with Heike Kluever" on 27 April 2022.