Dr. Teresa Völker

Teresa Völker is a postdoctoral 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.

Previously she was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Sciences Po Paris, and the University of Oslo, and worked on the WZB Protest Monitoring project and at the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG).  She received her PhD from Freie Universität Berlin.

Most of her work focuses on democracy and political conflict, including political mobilisation, political violence, political communication, and public opinion. Her current research examines how political and societal actors respond to political and democratic challenges. Methodologically, she combines quantitative and qualitative approaches, including text-as-data, network analysis, survey experiments, and interviews.

Her work has received several awards, including the Dissertation Prize of the German Political Science Association. She is completing her first book, Discursive Mainstreaming: How the Far Right Reshapes Public Debates. Her research has been published in leading journals, including the European Journal of Political Research, Journal of European Public Policy, and Political Communication.

She regularly engages with civil society organisations, policymakers, and the media, including as manager of the WZB Civil Society Advisory Board. Her research has been featured in outlets including The Guardian and Der SPIEGEL.