I am a political scientist studying how citizens and civil society contest political decisions outside elections, and how democratic institutions respond. My work focuses on two channels of influence: street mobilization and legal mobilization. I ask when protest and litigation change what representatives, governments and administrations decide, how citizens judge these strategies, and what they mean for trust in democratic institutions.

I trace these effects across three arenas. My research shows that local protest shifts what members of parliament talk about, that confrontational tactics can win or cost public support for movement demands, and that street mobilization shapes electoral competition, from campaigns in multilevel systems to the rise of new challenger parties. A second line of work treats courts as a political arena. It asks when opposition parties and civil society actors move conflicts into court, and how this changes citizens’ trust in representative institutions.

My current work extends this agenda in two directions. In my project, “Empowering Voices Beyond Ballots? Representative Claims by Non-Elected Actors”, I study how activists and movements claim to to represent others (e.g., future generations, “the true people”, or even nature), how these claims are perceived by citizens, and what this means for democratic institutions. In new work on AI infrastructure, I study the contestation of data centres in Europe: when residents and civil society organizations turn to the street or the courts, and how permitting authorities, courts and citizens respond. Across projects, I combine quasi-experimental designs, survey experiments and computational approaches.

I am currently a PRIME Fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin/WZB Berlin Social Science Center, and a Visiting Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, where I held a Max Weber Fellowship in 2025/26. Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University and at WZB’s Center for Civil Society Research. I hold a PhD in Political Science from the University of Cologne, where I wrote a dissertation on Political Representation and Protest Politics in European Democracies. During my doctoral studies, I was also a visiting researcher at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, and the University of Amsterdam.

My work appeared in the British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Research, Political Behavior, West European Politics, Electoral Studies, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Social Movement Studies and the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties among others. I regularly contribute to public debates on the political effects of protests and have provided expert commentary for media outlets including Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Tagesschau (ARD), taz-die tageszeitung, and Frankfurter Rundschau.

I am broadly interested in how citizens contest and reshape democratic institutions in times of social, ecological and technological transformation.

Research & Teaching Interests

Topics: Political Sociology · Protest & Social Movements · Legal Mobilization · Political Representation · Political Behavior · Democratic Institutions & Trust · Civil Society & Public Decision-Making

Methods: Research Design · Causal Inference · Survey Experiments · Computational Social Science · Quantitative Methods

Check my CV here.