Curriculum Vitae
Current Positions
Senior Researcher
Centre for Democracy Studies (ZDA), University of Zurich
Associate Researcher
Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra
Senior Lecturer
University of Zurich and University of Lucerne
Education
PhD in Political Science, University of Lucerne, 2019
Dissertation: Explaining Citizenship Light in the Context of Direct Democracy
Supervisors: Joachim Blatter and Daniele Caramani
MA in History and Communication Sciences, University of Fribourg
Research Interests
Political behaviour and political psychology; deliberative democracy; collective reasoning; democratic governance and democratic innovation; political participation; radicalisation and political violence; artificial intelligence and democracy; comparative political methodology.
Academic Appointments
2022–present — Senior Researcher, Centre for Democracy Studies (ZDA), University of Zurich
2025–present — Senior Lecturer, University of Lucerne
2022–present — Associate Researcher, Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra
2025 — Strategic Advisor, European Commission, Challenges and Opportunities for the Future of Democracy (Phase II)
2022–2025 — Senior Researcher, Department of Political Science, University of Geneva
2022–2024 — Research Associate, University of Tasmania
2021–2022 — SNSF Postdoc Mobility Fellow, University of Canberra
2019–2021 — Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra
Research Funding and Projects
Principal Investigator
Triage Against the Machine: Can AI Reason Deliberatively?
Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) SPARK, 2025
CHF 94,100
AI4DELIBERATION
Work Package Leader for the Swiss contribution, Horizon Europe, 2024–2027
Consortium funding: approximately €3 million
Swiss contribution: approximately €407,000
Assessing Deliberation in the Real World: The First Systematic Comparative Study of Deliberative Practices
Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Postdoc Mobility, 2021–2022
CHF 144,275
Research Leadership and Co-Investigation
Human–Machine Interaction for Democracy (HMI4D)
Co-Investigator, Hasler Foundation & Mercator Foundation, 2026–2028
CHF 591,000
Strengthening Democracy by Mobilizing Knowledge of Democratic Innovations
Principal Co-Investigator, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), 2021–2026
CAD 2,499,895
Swiss Citizens’ Assembly: A Democratic Innovation Involving Sortition, Deliberation and Participatory Democracy
Senior Research Fellow / Researcher, Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), 2022–2026
CHF 1.2 million
Publications
My publications span political behaviour, deliberative democracy, democratic innovations, political violence, political methodology, and artificial intelligence.
See the full Publications page and my Google Scholar profile.
Teaching
I teach courses in political science, democratic governance, citizenship, democratic innovation, and technology at the University of Zurich and the University of Lucerne.
See the full Teaching page.
Academic Service
Vice-President, DemocracyNet, University of Zurich, since 2024
Committee Member, Swiss Research Centre on Democratic Innovation, since 2024
Member, International Advisory Panel on Referendums, Australian National University, since 2023
Committee Member, Demoscan Association, since 2023
Member, Lucerne Cluster for Configurational Methods (LUCCS), since 2018
Associate Editor, Swiss Political Science Review, 2023–2025
Associate Editor, Frontiers in Political Science, since 2023
Methods
Quantitative and experimental methods; statistical and multilevel modelling; set-theoretic methods and QCA; computational text analysis; latent-variable and dimensionality-reduction techniques; simulation; large language model evaluation.
Programming and analytical tools include R, Python, Stata, SPSS, SAS, fsQCA, NVivo, Qualtrics, and LaTeX.