Field of Work
My research aims to understand how we can renew our democracies by communication and deliberation. The key goal is to develop novel links between normative theory and empirical political science, as well as to transform normative ideas into practical applications. My current research focuses on optimal forms of deliberation, the quality of public discourse, deliberative abilities of ordinary citizens, opinion formation in deliberative fora, the potential of citizen deliberation in direct democracy, deliberation on political rights of foreigners, and the public justification of political decisions.
Personal Information
Born in Bern in 1971, PhD and Habilitation at the University of Bern, Research Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2003-2004), Swiss Chair Fellow at the European University Institute (2005), Speaker of the DVPW-Arbeitskreis “Handlungs- und Entscheidungstheorie“ (AKHueT) (2009-2015), Visiting Scholar at the Australian National University (2009), Research Professor of the Swiss National Science Foundation at the University of Lucern (2010-2015), since 2011 Member of the Steering Committee der “Standing Group on Democratic Innovations” des ECPR; Fellow at the Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg (Delmenhorst; 2012), Member of the the Task Force “Negotiating to Agreement” of the American Political Science Association (2012-2013), Visiting Professor at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, 2014), since April 2015 Professor of Political Theory and Empirical Democracy Research at the University of Stuttgart.