Explaining Political Behaviour and Identity: Macro- and Micro-Level Perspectives

___Organizers

The lecture series is organized by an interdisciplinary team of doctoral fellows of the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences:

Oana Georgiana Buta, Political Science
Agata Maria Kraj, Political Science and Political Psychology
Isabel Winnwa, Political Science

___ Guest Profiles

Alexa Bankert, University of Georgia, United States of America
Alexa Bankert is an Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of Georgia since August 2016. She holds her B.A. from the Free University of Berlin and a Ph.D. from Stony Brook University. She won also several awards and grants, given by distinguished associations such as the American Political Science Association. Her research focuses on political psychology, studying the role of identity in political behavior, using quantitative methods and experiments.

"Partisan Identity strength is an important predictor of political behavior in the United States."

Richard Fox, Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles, United States of America 
Richard Fox is a Professor of Political Science at the Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, he was appointed a professor and chair of the political science department at Union College in Schenectady, New York. He also held several visiting positions at universities such as Rutgers University, College Year in Athens, and colleges affiliated with Mumbai University. His research focuses especially on the U.S. Congress, elections, media and politics and gender politics. In order to support his research, the National Science Foundation offered him in 2012 a grant to explore the political interests and ambition of high school and college students.

"All lectures fit perfectly together, it is a great gathering so far. Social scientists presenting their work!"

Jon Krosnick, Stanford University California, United States of America
Jon Krosnick is the Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences, Professor of Communication, Political Science and Psychology at Stanford University. Winner of the American Association for Public Opinion Research’s Lifetime Achievement Award, he is a social psychologist who does research on attitude formation, change, and effects, on the psychology of political behavior, and on survey research methods. Among the topics explored by Jon Krosnick’s political psychology research are related to how policy debates affect voters’ candidate preferences, how the news media shape which national problems citizens think are most important for the nation and shape how citizens evaluate the President’s job performance. Another important line of research he has pursued concerns the so-called issue publics, investigating the effects of becoming very knowledgeable about and emotionally invested in a government policy issue affects people’s political thinking and participation. He is also interested in how people’s political views change as they move through the life-cycle from early adulthood to old age. His recent work in survey methodology has explored the impact of mode of data collection (e.g., face-to-face, telephone, Internet) on response accuracy and the impact of survey response rates on substantive results.

"You don't need benchmarks to see this craziness."

"The event is a rich interdisciplinary discussion of vital issues of political scientists. You get exposed to work you usually don't hear about, because you're used to be in your own little world. The lectures opened my mind."

Liza Mügge, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Liza Mügge is associate Professor in political science and director of the Amsterdam Research Center for Gender and Sexuality both at the University of Amsterdam. She has been a residential fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (2016-2017) and Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard University (2014-2015) as well as visiting scholar at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University (2012). Liza is the recipient of competitive third-party grants, such as the VENI (2013) and VIDI (2017) of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. Her research interests include political equality and representation, intersectionality, politics of gender, transnationalism and diaspora politics and mixed methods.

"Reports about discrimination and exclusion in parliament are much higher for women than they are for men."

Ekaterina Rashkova, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
Ekaterina R. Rashkova is an Assistant Professor at the Utrecht School of Governance (USG), Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the effect of institutional arrangements on political behavior. At the moment she is interested in substantive representation of women in conservative parties and on comparative electoral law and its effect on party system development. Prior to joining USG, Ekaterina has worked at the University of Innsbruck (Austria), Leiden University (Netherlands) and Sussex University (UK). During the 2015-2016 academic year, she was a fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS) as a EURIAS Junior Fellow. Her project there examined the development and change in electoral law in ten Central and East European states. Ekaterina received her PhD in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh (USA) in 2010. Her dissertation Political Learning and the Number of Parties: Why Age Matters won the UniCredit and Universities Foundation Best CEE PhD Thesis Award in May 2011. She is co-editor of "European Political Science".

Didier Ruedin, University of Neuch?tel, Switzerland
Didier Ruedin is a senior researcher and lecturer at the Swiss Forum for Migration and Population Studies at the University of Neuch?tel and a visiting research fellow at the African Centre for Migration and Society at the University of the Witwatersrand. He obtained his M.Sc. and D.Phil. in Philosophy from the University of Oxford and subsequently he was a visiting fellow at the University of Vienna and University of Kentucky. His work focuses on reactions to immigration and diversity as well as discrimination, issue politicization and individual attitudes towards immigrants. He also investigates the political representation of women and ethnic groups in national parliaments.

"Countries that have increased the number of women in parliament over time have also shown changes in attitudes towards women leadership."

"The lectures are very interesting. Actually I had a lot to do this week, but when I received the invitation for this lecture series I immediately accepted it, because the BAGSS has a very good reputation and expertise."