About

I am Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo. My research and teaching interests generally lie within the fields of political behavior/ comparative politics and quantitative research methods/ data science. I have previously been Associate Professor and Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Oslo, and worked as a Researcher and Lecturer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. I have also been a Fulbright Fellow at Harvard University, and a PhD Fellow of the Research Council of Norway, while earning my PhD at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy. Before that, I obtained an MSc in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics (LSE).

I am currently a member of the Young Academy of Norway (AYF), which was founded in 2015 at the initiative of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. A presentation of my work and my thoughts on academia can be found on AYF’s webpage, here, while press coverage of the announcement of the membership can be found here (both links are in Norwgian).

I am increasingly focusing on Bayesian data analysis, and I will use this page to share some posts on Bayesian methods. My posts will typically use R to illustrate statistical concepts and manually implement relevant procedures step by step. An advantage of this approach is that the codes will be self-sufficient and rarely require installing any packages. I will also provide codes to reproduce simplified versions of the plots I report, using only R base graphics. Finally, please note that my goal is not to provide computationally optimal codes for Bayesian analysis – for that you could just use Stan. My goal is rather to provide hands-on illustrations that complement the abstract equations you will find in textbooks.

Media appearances and outreach

I appear regularly on Norwegian TV and radio, and in national newspapers. I try to make time for major news outlets, but usually have to decline invitations to hold unpaid lectures for small audiences – I just do not have enough time to do it all on top of teaching and research. I am no longer keeping a list of media appearances on this page, but you can find a mostly up-to-date list on my institutional webpage. One of my most visible contributions to the non-academic world is my other webpage, Estimite.com. You can also find me on twitter.

Ongoing projects

I am currently working on a number of projects in the fields of political behavior and political responsiveness. Many of these projects entail developing new Bayesian models to address the topic at hand, such as estimating latent trends in series of public opinion surveys.

Academic Publications

On political psychology, voting behavior, and methodology

On political responsiveness to public opinion

On legislative efficiency and transparency in the EU

On political economy and the Eurozone debt-crisis