Dr. Teresa Völker

Teresa Völker is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for Civil Society Research, a joint initiative of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research lies at the intersection of comparative politics, political sociology and political communication, with a focus on democracy.

She is currently a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies. Previously she was a visiting research fellow at Sciences Po Paris and the University of Oslo, and worked at the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG).

Her PhD at the Freie Universität Berlin dealt with the mainstreaming of the far right and the effects of Islamist and right-wing violence on public debates and public opinion. She holds a Master of Arts in Social Sciences from Humboldt University and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, Sociology and Media and Communication from Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, with international research stays at King’s College London and Università degli Studi di Milano.

Methodologically, she combines quantitative and qualitative approaches (e.g. network analysis, text as data, survey experiments, interviews).

Her work has received multiple awards, including the Dissertation Prize of the German Political Science Association.