Doctoral Researchers

DFG-Funded (Pol)

After completing his studies in Political Science and Psychology at the Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg, Dominik Austrup proceeded in his academic endeavours with a master’s degree in Political Theory at the Goethe-University Frankfurt in cooperation with the Technical-University Darmstadt. He spent a semester abroad at the New School for Social Research in New York. His research mostly concerns the question of how social movements interact with political legitimacy from a political realist perspective.

dominik.austrup"AT"uni-hamburg.de 

DFG-Funded (Pol)

In 2013 he earned his bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Aarhus University - that included a one-year stint at the Global and European Studies Institute at the University of Leipzig. Upon gaining working experience as an English teacher in Bogota (Colombia), he began the master’s program in politics, economics, and philosophy at Universität Hamburg from which he graduated in spring 2018. Since then he has been working on his dissertation at Universität Hamburg, while also gaining some teaching experience. His research interests span the fields of deliberative and epistemic theories democracy, preference/belief-formation (in particular adaptive preferences) and ideology critique.

DFG-Funded (Econ)

He holds a master degree in economics from the Erasmus School of Economics (Rotterdam). He has also studied economics in Passau, Victoria (Canada), and Halle and has completed a master degree in business and economic law. Before joining the DFG Graduate Program ‘Collective Decision-Making’, he has worked as a research and teaching associate at the Chair of Microeconomics (Lydia Mechtenberg) at Uni Hamburg. He investigates how communication and social norms influence collective decisions mainly employing experimental methods.

jan.biermann"AT"uni-hamburg.de 

DFG-Funded (Phil)

Suzanne Bloks works at the intersection of Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE). She holds a summa cum laude MA degree in Philosophy from Leiden University, a cum laude LLM degree in Law from Utrecht University, and a cum laude MSc degree in Mathematics from LSE. Furthermore, Suzanne was an intern at the Embassy of the Netherlands in Serbia, worked as research assistant in computational social choice at the University of Amsterdam, and was lecturer in constitutional law and legal theory at Utrecht University. Suzanne’s research focusses on democratic decision-making. She has published disciplinary and interdisciplinary papers about the design of electoral systems, democratic innovations such as referendums, and decision-making in the European Union. Her publications can be found on: https://suzannebloks.com/

DFG-Funded (Phil)

After studying business administration and sinology in Konstanz and Beijing, Christian Carl completed two Master’s degrees – one in “Ethics – Economics, Law and Politics” (similar to PEP) in Bochum and Utrecht, and one in philosophy in Frankfurt. Being most intrigued by normative questions of political and social life, his main research interests lie within political philosophy/theory. In particular, he focuses on democratic theory and topics related to transnational justice. Besides this, he has developed a keen interest in Chinese political philosophy and transcultural approaches to philosophy. Having studied both within the social sciences and the humanities, he strongly believes that socio-political problems become tangible only when examined from an interdisciplinary perspective.

DFG-Funded (Phil)

Dorela Dëgjoni is a Doctoral Researcher in Philosophy. Before this, she completed her undergraduate studies in Political Sciences and a Master’s of Science in Political Theories at the University of Tirana. Afterward, she followed the Research Training Program in the Social Sciences (MA RTP) at Humboldt University in Berlin. Her research interests are in the intersection of political sciences and political philosophy. Her current research focuses on the effects of vulnerability and relational equality in democratic decision-making.

UHH-Funded (Econ)

Having completed a bachelor’s degree in Political and Social Studies and Philosophy at the University of Würzburg in 2018, she went on to study the master’s program Politics, Economics and Philosophy at the University of Hamburg. During her studies she has been employed by multiple departments as a student research assistant and is now pursuing her own PhD regarding questions of the effect of discursive processes such as democratic deliberation on collective decision-making. She is especially interested in social choice theoretic and formal approaches, connecting political theory, epistemology and microeconomic methods.

UHH-Funded (Pol)

Daniel Häuser holds a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and History from the University of Heidelberg and a Master’s degree in Philosophy from the Humboldt-University of Berlin. Before joining the Graduate Program, he was a doctoral student at the Free University of  Berlin, Department of Philosophy, and a research assistant at the University of Hamburg,  Department of Political Science. He specializes in political theory, moral and legal philosophy, and the history of political thought. His research focusses on normative questions arising with respect to migration policy.

DFG-Funded (Phil)

Carola Hesch obtained both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Mannheim, with economics as a minor. Additionally, she took classes in political science. She spent an exchange semester at the University of Leiden where she attended courses from the PPE program. Before starting her doctorate, she worked in science communications and launched a podcast. Carola is interested in contractarian answers to the anarchist challenge. Concretely, her research is concerned with how competitive federalism may contribute to political legitimacy.

carola.hesch"AT"uni-hamburg.de 

DFG-Funded (Phil)

She studied International Business Administration, Political Science and Philosophy in Berlin, Cartagena and Hamburg. Her research interests include theories of justice, equality and democracy. In her doctoral dissertation she focuses on aleatoric political systems. She examines the potential of employing groups of randomly selected citizens instead of elected politicians to transform individual interests into collective political decision. Her paper „The Egalitarian Quality of Lottocracy” has been published in Quaderns de Filosofia.

julia[dot]jakobi[at]uni-hamburg[dot]de

UHH-Funded (Pol)

Dylan completed his bachelor’s degree in International Political Economy at Colorado College, during which he interned for the United States Senate Judiciary Committee and studied abroad in Lüneburg. Upon completion of his bachelor’s, he undertook short research stays in Pristina, Kosovo and in Göttingen before enrolling in Uni Hamburg’s M.Sc. program in Politics, Economics, and Philosophy, which he finished in early 2021. His research interests include property rights, personal data, and endogenous institutions.

DFG-Funded (Econ)

Juliane Koch obtained her B.A. in International Cultural and Business Studies from the University of Passau with a research stay in Argentina and internship stages at the UN, GFA Development Consulting and the German-Peruvian Chamber of Commerce. After graduating from the M.Sc. in Development Economics at Lund University (Sweden) and working as a research assistant, she started her PhD in Economics at Hamburg University. Experimentally, she investigates what hinders cooperation in collective action problems and how cooperation and voluntary contribution can be incentivized. For instance, her research mirrors cooperation dilemmata of Covid-19 Vaccination and Climate Change where inequalities occur and questions of fair shares arise.

DFG-Funded (Pol)

She holds a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Political Science from the Universität Hamburg, the latter with a specialization in Comparative and Area Studies. She spent a semester at Linnaeus University in Växjö, Sweden. During her Master’s she worked in a research project on right-wing populism at the Helmut-Schmidt-University. In her master thesis, she examined differences in constitutional compliance between governments with and without populist participation. She is interested in populism, judicial politics as well as computational text analysis.

jasmin.sarah.koenig"AT"uni-hamburg.de 

DFG-Funded (Econ)

He has been a doctoral student in economics and a research associate in economics and philosophy at the Universität Hamburg since 2019. Before, he graduated with a bachelor degree in economics and a master degree in public economics, law and politics from the Leuphana University of Lüneburg. His research is concerned with welfare economics, social choice theory, and practical philosophy. Topics include the formal analysis of aggregation procedures, positional ranking rules, facts and norms in aggregation, interpersonal utility comparisons, welfarism, utilitarianism, consequentialism and intrinsic value.

robert.raschka"AT"uni-hamburg.de 

DFG-Funded (Phil)

Filippo Riscica Lizzio graduated in Philosophy at the universities of Catania (BA cum laude) and Bologna (MA cum laude). While at the University of Bologna, he spent visiting periods at the University of Helsinki and at the University of Nottingham. After these experiences, he attended the Logic Year Program at the ILLC, University of Amsterdam. His research interests lie at the intersection between social epistemology, formal epistemology, logic and political philosophy, focusing on the epistemic effects of group deliberations in political decisions.

UHH-Funded (Pol)

She double majored in Political Science and International Relations and Translation and Interpreting at Yeditepe University in Istanbul. She holds an MSc in Politics, Economics, and Philosophy from Universität Hamburg. During her Master’s, she worked as research assistant for the Chair of Comparative Politics and was involved in a project on maternity leave impact on women’s career outcomes in academia. In her master thesis, she examined the effects of political ideology on governments’ policy responses to the coronavirus crisis. Her research interests lie at the intersection between behavioral economics and political economy. She is specifically interested in preference formation, policymaking, and crisis politics.

zeynep.ceren.topac"AT"uni-hamburg.de 

DFG-Funded (Econ)

She is a doctoral student in Economics with a focus on experimental research. She holds a BSc in Economics from the University of Bayreuth and a MSc in Business Administration from the Humboldt University of Berlin with exchange semesters in Oslo and Montréal. In both programs, she graduated with empirical theses on technology acceptance, which were selected for publication in international research journals. Arna gained professional experience working for a university spin-off and a strategy consultancy in applied behavioural, personnel, and organisational research. She is interested in the effect of technology and autonomous systems on ethical decision-making in groups.