Lukas Stötzer

The research fields of Professor Stötzer's professorship include political sociology and democracy research, political opinion formation, the positioning of parties and election predictions: How do majorities form in elections? How do citizens form an opinion? What role does polarisation play in this and what influence does it have on German democracy? Professor Stötzer deals with these and other questions at the Faculty of Management, Economics and Society.

Professor Stötzer has already been involved in various research projects: The project "Coalition politics before the election", for example, investigated how statements by parties that they would like to enter into coalitions with other parties affect voting behaviour. And under what conditions parties are prepared to signal to other parties during the election campaign that they can envisage a coalition alliance. In another research project, Professor Stötzer looked at the interplay between social inequality, migration and populism.

To the research project "Election forecasts for the German federal election 2025"

Professor Stötzer has previously worked at the Humboldt University of Berlin, the University of Zurich, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and the University of Mannheim. He has been Professor of Quantitative Methods at the Department of Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Witten/Herdecke University since 2022 and has also been responsible for the Social Data Science (B. Sc.) degree programme since 2023.

Previous positions:

• Since 2022 Professor of Quantitative Methods at the Department of Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Witten/Herdecke University (Faculty of Management, Economics and Society)
• 2019 to 2022 Senior Researcher Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany / Cluster of Excellence SCRIPTS
• 2016 to 2019 Senior Researcher and Lecturer / University of Zurich, Switzerland
• 2015 to 2016 Postdoctoral Fritz Thyssen Fellow / Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, US
• 2010 to 2015 Researcher and Lecturer University of Mannheim, Germany

Education:

• 2015 Dr rer. soc. University of Mannheim, Germany Lorenz-von-Stein Prize. Best PhD thesis in Social Science University of Mannheim 2015
• 2010 Master of Science: University of Essex, Political Economy (with Distinction)
• 2009 Bachelor of Arts: University of Konstanz / Political & Administrative Science

At Witten/Herdecke University, Professor Stötzer regularly offers statistics and data analysis, mathematics, advanced data science courses and substantive seminars on political behaviour and opinion-forming.

German politics

• Political elections (predictions) and parties
• German democracy
• Opinion Formation
• Polarisation

Prof Stötzer is represented on the following social media channels:

Twitter

Mastodon

Further information can be found on the website of Prof. Stötzer to find.