About
How is “terrorism” changing us? How to make peace with your enemies? How do news media cover political violence?
I am a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at the KU Leuven Centre for Research on Peace and Development in Belgium, where I also obtained my Ph.D. in 2020. Before returning to KU Leuven, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Sociology and Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). My research focuses on public opinion formation during and after contentious events, including interstate wars, civil conflicts, and terrorist attacks. Methodologically, I predominantly use quantitative methods to address these topics in various countries worldwide, including Azerbaijan, Belgium, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, and the US. I am also a passionate Open Science activist, involved in several large-scale replication projects.
My work has been published in the Journal of Communication, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Peace Research, and PNAS, among others. I have been awarded the NTNU Research Excellence Award and the KU Leuven Research Council Award for promising young researchers. The Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), KU Leuven, and NTNU-ISS have supported my research with various grants. I co-founded the educational card game Bonding Beyond Borders, the Violence, Instability, and Peace (VIP) Workshop, and Meth-Lab. I also co-organized the 2023 Annual Political Science Workshops of the Low Countries, ReproducibiliTea Leuven, and I am a Board Member of the Dutch-speaking political science association of Belgium.
Most of my current research projects expand and build on my Ph.D. dissertation, which received the 2021 Best Dissertation Award from the International Communication Association (ICA) Political Communication Division. You can watch my Ph.D. presentation here.