Warm welcome Prof. Dr. Theresa Gessler!

1 September 2025

Photo: UHH/Theresa Gessler

On September 1, 2025, Prof. Dr. Theresa Gessler will assume the Chair in Political Science, with a focus on Democratic Political Decision-Making, at the Department of Social Sciences within the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences at the University of Hamburg.

Theresa Gessler initially studied Sociology with minors in History and Philosophy of Sciences at Goethe University Frankfurt, earning a B.A. Subsequently, she completed a Master's degree in Political Science with a specialization in Research Methods at Central European University in Budapest. In 2019, she earned her Ph.D. in Politics and Social Sciences with the thesis "Political Conflict on Immigration and Democracy in Europe" at the European University Institute in Florence. From 2019 to 2022, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Digital Democracy Lab of the Institute for Political Science at the University of Zurich. In 2022, she took over the Junior Professorship for Comparative Political Science at Europa-Universität Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). Since 2022, she has also been a visiting scholar at the Center for Civil Society Research at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.

Her research focuses especially on democracy and democratic backsliding, immigration and right-wing populism, digitization, politics and gender, as well as (quantitative) research methods and text analysis.

The department members are looking forward to collaborating with her and warmly welcome Theresa Gessler as a new Professor!

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