Lennart Schürmann

Lennart Schürmann

Post-Doctoral Research Fellow

WZB Berlin Social Science Center

About me

Hi, I am a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Civil Society Research at WZB Berlin Social Science Center, where I am part of the WZB ProtestMonitoring, a research project on protest and political radicalization in Germany. From January to June 2025, I will be WZB Harvard Merit Fellow/Visiting Scholar at Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University.

Previously, I was a PhD Candidate at the Cologne Center for Comparative Politics at University of Cologne. During my PhD, I have also been a visiting researcher at University of Amsterdam, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, and Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

My research interests include protest, social movements, political participation, political representation, electoral systems, European politics and computational social sciences. In my PhD thesis, I studied Political Representation and Protest Politics in European Democracies. I apply a variety of methods with special focus on computational text analysis tools and survey experiments.

My work appeared in the British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Research, Electoral Studies, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties among others.

I am engaged in public debates on the political effects of protests and have contributed expert opinions for example to Tagesschau (ARD) Quarks (WDR), taz-die tageszeitung, and Frankfurter Rundschau.

Download my resumé.

Interests
  • European Politics
  • Electoral Systems
  • Political Representation
  • Protest
  • Social Movements
  • Political Participation
  • Computational Social Sciences
Education

  • PhD in Political Science, 2023

    University of Cologne

  • MA in Political Science, 2019

    Goethe University Frankfurt

  • Exchange Semester, 2018

    EHESS - School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences Paris

  • BSc in Social Sciences, 2016

    University of Cologne

  • Exchange Semester, 2015

    Sciences Po Grenoble, Grenoble Alpes University

Recent Publications

Lennart Schürmann, Jan Schwalbach, Noam Himmelrath (2024). Location matters! Geospatial dynamics of MP responses to Covid-19 protests in multilevel systems. In European Journal of Political Research.

Cite Project DOI

Bruno Castanho Silva, Lennart Schürmann, Sven-Oliver Proksch (2023). Modulation of Democracy: Partisan Communication During and After Election Campaigns. In British Journal of Political Science.

Cite Project DOI

Lennart Schürmann (2023). The impact of local protests on political elite communication: evidence from Fridays for Future in Germany. In Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties.

Cite Project DOI

Lennart Schürmann (2022). Do competitive districts get more political attention? Strategic use of geographic representation during campaign and non-campaign periods. In Electoral Studies.

Cite Project DOI

Lennart Schürmann, Sebastian Stier (2022). Who Represents the Constituency? Online Political Communication by Members of Parliament in the German Mixed-Member Electoral System. In Legislative Studies Quarterly.

Cite Project DOI

Projects

*
All Protest Representation Electoral Systems Campaigning
Empowering Voices Beyond Ballots?
Many diagnose that representative democracy is in a state of crisis, with an increasing alienation between citizens and elected representatives. In this crisis of representation, other political actors, such as protest activists, enter the stage and increasingly claim to represent either parts of the electorate or subjects without formal representation.
Empowering Voices Beyond Ballots?
Political Protest and Radicalization
Since the 1990s, the protest scene in Germany has been shaped by issues such as migration, the environment and welfare. These issues have often led to violent mobilisations and counter-mobilisations on the streets.
Political Protest and Radicalization
Political Representation and Protest Politics in European Democracies
Looking at the newspapers in recent years, one topic seemed to be omnipresent - political protest. Street mobilization constitutes an integral part of political participation in representative democracies nowadays. Yet, to what extent can protests influence politics in representative democracies?
Political Representation and Protest Politics in European Democracies

Previous Positions

 
 
 
 
 
University of Cologne
Doctoral Researcher at the Cologne Center for Comparative Politics
University of Cologne
Oct 2019 – Dec 2023 Cologne, Germany

Responsibilities include:

  • Member of the Chair for European and Multilevel Politics (Prof. Dr. Sven Oliver Proksch)
  • Writing PhD Thesis: The Political Representation of Protest in European Democracies
  • Teaching BA Seminar: How Can Protest Change Politics? Social Movements and Political Representation
 
 
 
 
 
Pompeu Fabra University
Visiting Researcher in the Research Group Institutions and Political Actors
Pompeu Fabra University
Oct 2022 – Nov 2022 Barcelona, Spain

Responsibilities include:

  • Conducting interviews with Social Movement activists and policy-makers
 
 
 
 
 
WZB - Berlin Social Science Center
Visiting Researcher at the Center for Civil Society Research
WZB - Berlin Social Science Center
Jun 2022 – Jul 2022 Berlin, Germany

Responsibilities include:

  • Conceptualization of an article on why politicians in European democracies refer to protests and other collective actions in parliamentary speeches
 
 
 
 
 
University of Amsterdam
Visiting Researcher in the Programme Group Challenges to Democratic Representation
University of Amsterdam
Sep 2021 – Dec 2021 Amsterdam, Netherlands

Responsibilities include:

  • Member of the Hot Politics Lab
  • Development of a measurement of emotional appeals to collective actions in multi-lingual political texts
 
 
 
 
 
German Federal Parliament - Bundestag
Policy Intern
German Federal Parliament - Bundestag
May 2019 – Jun 2019 Berlin, Germany

Responsibilities include:

  • Preparation of policy positions on European Stability Mechanism
  • Writing of a policy paper published in Makronom - Online-Magazin für Wirtschaftspolitik
 
 
 
 
 
GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
Research Intern in the Computational Social Science Department
GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
Feb 2019 – Mar 2019 Cologne, Germany

Responsibilities include:

  • Analysis of regional representation in the political communication of German politicians (Master’s Thesis Project)
 
 
 
 
 
Federal Institute for Population Research
Research Assistant in the Research Group Migration and Mobility
Federal Institute for Population Research
Sep 2018 – Feb 2019 Wiesbaden, Germany

Responsibilities include:

  • Development of an online survey for the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs
 
 
 
 
 
Goethe University Frankfurt
Research Assistant and Teaching Assistant at the Chair for Comparative Politics
Goethe University Frankfurt
Feb 2017 – Feb 2018 Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Responsibilities include:

  • Development of a dataset for the DFG research project Individualized Representation and its Sources
  • Teaching BA Tutorials: Applied Statistical Analysis: Political Representation by Parliamentary Elites
 
 
 
 
 
Goethe University Frankfurt
Administrative Assistant at the GraduateCenter Social Sciences
Goethe University Frankfurt
Oct 2016 – Feb 2017 Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Responsibilities include:

  • Administration of PhD applications
  • Counseling concerning research funding opportunities
 
 
 
 
 
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Research Intern and Research Assistant in the Research Group Transnational Diffusion of Innovation
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Feb 2016 – Aug 2016 Cologne, Germany

Responsibilities include:

  • Collection of publication records of social scientists at German universities and research institutes
 
 
 
 
 
University of Cologne
Teaching Assistant at the Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology
University of Cologne
Apr 2014 – Sep 2015 Cologne, Germany

Responsibilities include:

  • Teaching BA Tutorials: Introduction to Statistics for Social Scientists

Teaching & Workshops

Creating a Webpage with R (PhD Workshop)
University of Cologne May 2022
Organizer together with J. Bekmuratovna
How Can Protest Change Politics? Social Movements and Political Representation (BA Seminar)
University of Cologne Apr 2022 – Sep 2022
Instructor
Authoring a PhD (PhD Workshop)
University of Cologne Apr 2021 – Jul 2021
Organizer together with Ebru Ece Özbey
Strategic Models of Democratic Politics (MA Seminar)
University of Cologne Dec 2020 – Mar 2021
Teaching Assistant to Jun.-Prof. Chitralekha Basu, PhD
Introduction to Quantitative Methods (MA Seminar)
University of Cologne Oct 2019 – Dec 2020
Teaching Assistant to Dr. Bruno Castanho Silva
Applied Statistical Analysis: Political Representation by Parliamentary Elites (BA Seminar)
Goethe University Frankfurt Apr 2017 – Sep 2017
Teaching Assistant to Dr. Dominic Nyhuis
Introduction to Statistics for Social Scientists (BA Tutorial)
University of Cologne Apr 2014 – Sep 2015
Teaching Assistant to Teaching Assistant to Prof. Dr. Marita Jacob

Contact