Theresa Gessler

Theresa Gessler is a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Public Policy (Department of Political Science) and the Digital Democracy Lab of the University of Zurich. Her research studies questions at the core of political behavior and party competition research with online data. This entails developing new methods for the study of political behavior through digital data as well as studying how digitalization transforms political processes through its effect on opinion formation and party competition. Next to classical political science methods, she uses text-as-data, webscraping and various types of digital trace data in her research.

Before joining the University of Zurich, Theresa was a doctoral researcher at the European University Institute from 2015 to 2019. Her PhD thesis examined political conflict on democracy and immigration. As part of her PhD, she was also involved in the ERC research project Political Conflict in Europe in the Shadow of the Great Recession (POLCON). She also completed a Master in Political Science with Specialization in Political Research Methodology at Central European University.