Ny ph.d.-studerende: Robert Martin Stelzle

My name is Robert, and I just joined the department as a new PhD student on February 1st. I am new to Aarhus, having previously lived in Berlin, where I completed my Bachelor’s at Freie Universität, my Master’s at Humboldt University, and worked as a student assistant at the Berlin Social Science Center. Originally, I am from Osnabrück, Germany.

As I am interested in issue competition between political parties, in my project, I will investigate how different aspects of electoral outcomes shape parties’ issue agendas. Do losing parties shift their issue profiles to more closely resemble those of winning parties? Are ideologically proximate parties more sensitive to each other’s changes in issue salience because they compete for the same pool of voters? How does party system fragmentation affect parties’ salience strategies? My supervisors are Henrik Bech Seeberg as well as Peter Bjerre Mortensen and I will be joining the Comparative Politics section.

In my free time, I love going out to watch football games — less for the game itself and more for the atmosphere created by the supporters in the stadium. Having attended my first AGF game last weekend, I can already tell that I will have a great time here in Denmark.

I am in office 1332-223. Feel free to stop by for a coffee or to chat about issue competition, political parties, football, or anything else. I look forward to meeting you!