I am a Lecturer in Political Science (Research Methods) at the University of Melbourne. Before, I held positions at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute in Gothenburg, Sweden. I maintain affiliations with both institutions.

My research interests focus on the comparative study of political regimes, Internet politics, and political communication. 

I am Principal Investigator and Project Leader of the DFG-funded project on Smart Authoritarianism? Comparing the Internet Strategies of Authoritarian Regimes. In other research projects, I study the language of political leaders or inquire about Pandemic Backsliding during the Covid-19 pandemic. More broadly, I compare and analyze patterns in episodes of democratization and autocratization. I work with qualitative and quantitative methods and am passionate about computational text analysis. 

I am a mother of two children (born in 2019 and 2022).