Research
My research sits at the intersection of public opinion, party-system change, and political behaviour. Below: the current flagship project, longer-running research threads, and a record of past funded projects.
Flagship project
Divided Nations: The Cultural Foundations of Affective Polarisation
British Academy Small Research Grant, 2023–2025 (completed). Affective polarisation — the tendency to view political opponents with hostility independent of policy disagreement — is increasingly recognised as a threat to democratic stability. This project examines its cultural foundations, drivers, and consequences in the Italian case, drawing on original panel survey data collected in 2025.
Outputs from this project are in preparation. For the underlying conceptual framework, see A tale of two crises: Affective polarisation in Greece (Frontiers in Political Science, 2024). A related project, Cultural Divides and Affective Polarisation (LSE Hellenic Observatory, 2022–2024), used parallel data collected in Greece.
Research threads
Affective polarisation
How do citizens come to dislike, distrust, or fear partisans of other parties — independent of their policy disagreements? My work in this area covers measurement (what survey instruments capture, and what they miss), comparative incidence across European democracies, and consequences for democratic attitudes and behaviour.
Party systems and voter switching
Building on the cartel-party tradition (Katz and Mair) and the comparative literature on challenger parties, I study how voters move between parties, how party systems realign during periods of crisis, and how cartelisation interacts with the rise of radical alternatives. Empirical focus: Southern Europe, with particular attention to Greece.
Public opinion
Comparative work on political attitudes in Europe — including welfare-state preferences, attitudes towards European integration, and citizenship — drawing on cross-national survey data.
Survey methodology and quantitative methods
Question wording, scale construction, experimental designs, and the use of online search data to measure opinion in contexts where conventional survey research is constrained. I teach quantitative methods at undergraduate, postgraduate, and ECPR summer-school level.
Past and ongoing projects
PreferenceMatcher
An academic consortium of political scientists, social psychologists, computer scientists, and communication specialists from the University of Zurich, University of Twente, Cyprus University of Technology, and Oxford Brookes University, developing e-literacy tools designed to enhance voter education.
Change Through Crises? Solidarity and De-solidarization in Germany and Europe (SoliKris)
Funder: Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Duration: December 2017 – November 2020. A collaborative project of the GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, the University of Heidelberg, and the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, examining the effects of successive European crises on solidarity within and between societies.
Political Parties and Interest Groups in Southern Europe
2016–. Comparative and longitudinal study of party–interest group relations across third-wave Southern European democracies (Greece, Portugal, Spain), with attention to the period after the eurozone crisis. Empirical work draws on organisational data, leadership profiles, original questionnaires, and elite interviews.
IntUne — Integrated and United? A Quest for Citizenship in an Ever Closer Europe
2006–2009. Sixth Framework Programme project coordinated by the University of Siena, examining changes in the scope, nature, and characteristics of citizenship across the deepening and enlargement of the European Union. I was research assistant for the Greek team, working on national elites.