I am a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Amsterdam and the KU Leuven (joint degree). I obtained a masters degree in communication science from the research master program at the University of Amsterdam and a bachelors degree in communication studies and economics from the University of Mannheim. In 2016 I was awarded a 4-Year fellowship from the FWO – Research Foundation Flanders (Belgium) for a research project on democratic innovations. My PhD is supervised by Prof. Sofie Marien and Prof. Wouter van der Brug.

I am interested in political psychology and political behavior, particularly in the development and the decline of perceived democratic legitimacy. In my PhD project, I investigate the often-stated potential of democratic innovations to reconnect citizens to political authorities and to tackle an acclaimed legitimacy deficit with a specific focus on winners and losers of democratic decisions. I am also interested in political consumerism and in the role of political fact-checking during election campaigns in shaping political trust. Methodologically, I use mainly experimental methods and comparative survey analysis but I am also interested in qualitative approaches.