I am a joint PhD candidate in Political Science and in Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, where I focus on topics in political communication, political psychology, and political behavior in Western European multiparty systems. My methodological interests are varied, although I have years of experience in survey methodology, specifically in non-probability sample data stemming from voting advice applications.

My dissertation examines how the internationalization of politics has exposed foreign publics to the domestic political dynamics of other countries - especially the publics of U.S. allies to the domestic politics of the United States - and how this exposure has led them to adopt U.S.-based partisan identities. I show that these audiences increasingly respond to political cues much like American voters do toward their own elites, or like domestic publics generally do toward their national leaders. I develop this argument at the intersection of interdependence theory and public diplomacy, accounting for the cross-border diffusion of political information and partisan identities. I demonstrate how this internationalization of politics grants certain (U.S.) leaders new levers to shape and mobilize foreign publics in ways that constitute an underrecognized but potentially impactful form of foreign interference.

My work has been published by or is in press in journals such as International Studies Quarterly, European Union Politics, Acta Politica, Foreign Policy Analysis, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and Nature Scientific Data. My work has been commissioned by NATO, by ministries, national media outlets, advocacy organizations, and think tanks such as the Clingendael Institute and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. My research has also featured in Dutch parliamentary commissions of inquiry.

You can find my Penn profile on the Annenberg School for Communication Profile and the Political Science Department websites. I am being advised by Sarah Bush in Political Science and Yphtach Lelkes in Communication. My committee is further comprised of Diana Mutz and Dan Hopkins. I am affiliated with the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics (ISCAP) and the Center for Information Networks and Democracy (CIND). In 2021-2022, I was the Miller & Lavigne Graduate Fellow and a University Graduate Fellow in Political Science at the Pennsylvania State University, where I focused on quantitative methods in political science research.

In addition, I am a research fellow at the Kieskompas – Election Compass Institute where, between 2016 and 2021, I primarily developed Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) and conducted large-n opinion research. Currently, I lend my knowledge and expertise to my colleagues at the research institute, assist with VAA and survey design and analysis, and implement the skills and knowledge acquired through my doctoral program to further the scientific mission of the institute.

At Kieskompas, I have developed over 30 VAAs, the most notable of which are the ones for the Dutch parliamentary elections in 2017 (over a million responses) and 2021 (2.5 million responses), the Iranian local and presidential elections, the Dutch municipal elections in 2018 (for example Amsterdam), the European elections in the Netherlands, a European political persona tool, the US Democratic primaries in 2020, as well as a ‘Trump Meter‘ that has been disseminated in 8 countries, and has collected over 700,000 responses. Overall, more than 8 million voters have made use of VAAs I developed.