I teach introductory and advanced courses on democratic representation, EU politics and political behavior. Key themes of my courses are how political representation can serve as an assessment criterion of democratic quality, how representation works beyond the nation state, how public opinion shapes and is shaped by democratic politics, and what Europeanization and globalization mean for democracy. I also teach research design and applied quantitative methods courses, in particular, on causal inference and experiments as well as quantitative text analysis.
Highlighting connections between different debates and sub-fields in political science is a key focus of my teaching from the first semester. Build bridges not walls!
Providing students with an overview of the field rather than specialized knowledge of a single issue takes priority for me. If you have a good map of the kingdom, you can conquer any fiefdom.
Exploiting the diversity of formal and informal learning methods in seminars is important to me. There must be as many learning methods in class as learning styles in us.
Exploring and analysing data with students is an integral part of all my courses – no matter whether first-year undergraduates or last-year masters students. Working with some data can be fun for everyone.