I am Associate Professor in Political Communication and Journalism at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), Department of Communication Science, University of Amsterdam (UvA).

My research interests comprise media-politics relations, political communication, political behaviour, public opinion, journalism and legislative behaviour with a regional focus on the European Union. My work addresses questions that concern the relationship between representatives and represented, and particularly the linking role of the media in that relationship, and thereby feeds into debates about the legitimacy and accountability of politics.

I am currently leading a research project entitled ‘And the winner is…. !? The battle for the most impactful framing of election results between media and politics in multi-party systems’, which is funded by the  Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). My publications have appeared in journals such as the European Journal of Political Research, European Union Politics, the International Journal of Press/Politics, the Journal of Common Market Studies, the Journal of European Public Policy, The Information Society, and West European Politics. My recent book ‘The personalization of politics in the European Union’ was published with Oxford University Press in 2022.

I am also affiliated with the Center for Politics and Communication (CPC) and the Amsterdam Centre for European Studies (ACES, formerly ACCESS EUROPE). At ACES, I am Co-Leader of the UvA Research Priority Area ‘The Future of European Democracy’. I am also member of the executive board the 2024 European Election Study and member of the editorial board of the European Journal of Political Research.

I previously held postdoctoral positions at AScoR and at the Department of Public Administration and Political Science at the VU University Amsterdam as part of ACCESS EUROPE; and before that at the Jean Monnet Chair of Prof Wolfgang Wessels, Political Science Department, University of Cologne, where I was member of the former internationally collaborative research project ‘Observatory of Parliaments after Lisbon’ (OPAL). I obtained my PhD in European Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2012.

I was co-founder of the ECPR Standing Group ‘Political Communication’, was the convenor during its first term (2018-2021), and member of the steering committee until early 2024. I was also founding director of the Erasmus Academic Network on Parliamentary Democracy in Europe (PADEMIA), which brought together scholars from 56 research and teaching institutes from all over Europe between 2013 and 2016.