Lukas Hetzer

I am a doctoral researcher in Political Science at the University of Cologne, where I work on European politics, political behavior, political communication, and public opinion.

My research focuses on how citizens, political actors, and institutions respond to crises and broader political challenges. A recurring emphasis of my work is on democratic politics under pressure, with particular interests in European integration, crisis governance, institutional change, political representation, and the communication of political conflict.

Methodologically, I work at the intersection of political science and computational social science. I use large-scale text data, quantitative computational methods, advanced survey designs and (quasi-)experiments to study political discourse, public opinion, and political behavior. I am also interested in building, linking, and analysing large-scale political datasets, particularly institutional text data from parliaments and EU institutions.

I hold an M.Sc. degree in Social Sciences Research from the University of Amsterdam and a B.Sc. degree in Social Sciences from Humboldt University Berlin. Before joining the University of Cologne, I worked at GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences on election research and data-based knowledge transfer, and held research assistant positions at the University of Amsterdam, Ghent University, and Humboldt University Berlin. I also teach courses on quantitative methods, EU politics, and crisis politics.

Please feel free to explore my work and get in touch.