Meet the Cluster Community: Nanna Lauritz Schönhage

1. Why are you studying inequality?

I'm particularly interested in how various types of inequality shape voting behaviour. Not just inequality in an economic sense, but also inequality in regard to various types of representation.

2. What are you working on?

I'm working on the Inequality Barometer. It's a yearly survey in which we ask various questions about people's perceptions of wealth and economic inequality. Beyond that, I am currently working on a paper in which I look at how ethnic minority voters might combat representational inequalities with their electoral behaviour.

3. How did you end up here?

I did a double degree in Konstanz during my masters, and I really loved it here. In fact, the time I spent at the university during my MA really opened my eyes to research, and made me want to do a PhD.

4. Recent highlight?

Successfully defended my PhD!

5. Dream research project?

I'm very curious about environmental inequalities - i.e. environmental disasters, and how this might shape voter's opinions. I'm specifically curious about areas where these kinds of disasters might be expected (for instance, flooding around rivers), and where governments could do something to hinder the disaster, but don't. And how this might differ from areas where governments actively try to prevent similar disasters.

Nanna Lauritz Schönhage, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher in the project "Inequality Barometer: A Repeated Representative Opinion Survey on Inequality and Social Mobility at the Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality", University of Konstanz. Her research interests include political accountability, elite behaviour, voter behaviour, partisanship, political representation and survey experiments.