Ursula Daxecker

Principal Investigator

u.daxecker@uva.nl | Web Profile

Ursula Daxecker is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam and Principal Investigator of the Elections, Violence, and Parties (EVaP) project. Her research is on political violence and contentious politics, with a special focus on the quality of elections and electoral violence. Her work has been published with Oxford University Press, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Peace Research, and Journal of Conflict Resolution, among others.

Dr. Daxecker directs EVaP and contributes broadly to the project. The project aims to understand the dynamics of electoral violence in the Global South, with a special emphasis on India and Nigeria. The project proposes a novel theoretical framework that highlights political parties as key intermediate actors in the production of electoral contention. Over the course of five years, Daxecker and the project team will examine the conditions leading to electoral violence with a mixed-method approach, ranging from fieldwork interviews to advanced quantitative methods.

Neeraj Prasad

Research Fellow

Neeraj Prasad is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow with the Elections, Violence, and Parties (EVaP) and the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. His research interests lie at the intersection of political economy and comparative politics. Specifically, his research examines how inequality shapes political mobilization in both non-violent and violent contexts. He uses a mixed-methods approach that combines statistical analysis using large demographic datasets with surveys, field research, case studies, and comparative historical analysis. His work has been published in Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties.

Noyonika Das

PhD candidate

Noyonika Das is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. She holds a Master’s degree in Society and Culture and a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology. In the EVaP project she will focus her research on election violence in India. She is particularly interested in the role of political elites and nonstate actors in establishing electoral control which often involves various patterns of violent mobilization.

Maureen Fubara

PhD candidate

Maureen Fubara is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam.  She holds a Master’s degree in International Relations and a Bachelors’s Degree in International Studies and Diplomacy. Her research interests are elections and political violence in Nigeria. She uses quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze the subnational variations in the actors, targets, geography, and scale of election violence in Nigeria.

Hennes-Michel Barnehl

Research Master student and intern

Hennes-Michel Barnehl is completing his internship with the Research Master’s Social Sciences with EVaP. For the project, he is automating the import of polling booth data and will later link this data to reports of electoral violence via GPS coordinates. His general interests are with political (dis-)trust, its causes and consequences, and with political behaviour and comparative politics more generally. When he is not studying, he is probably practicing playing guitar, watching movies with a passion or on either a hiking or a cycling trip somewhere. 

Megan Turnbull

Visiting Professor
Megan Turnbull is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Affairs at the University of Georgia, USA. She is also a Research Fellow in the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University and a Faculty Affiliate at the United States International University-Africa in Kenya. Her research broadly examines violent threats to democracy and how citizens respond to them. She is currently working on a book manuscript that examines the joint organization of election violence by political elites and different nonstate groups in Nigeria. Megan is very excited spend the Fall 2022 as a visiting faculty member at the University of Amsterdam

Shahane de Silva

Research Intern
Mario Shahane De Silva is a third-year student at the University of Amsterdam reading for a Bachelor in Political Science with a specialisation in International Relations. As part of his programme he is completing a research internship with the Elections, Violence, and Parties (EVaP) project. His research interests lie in understanding the causes and consequences of widespread conflict in South Asia.

Victor Alembik

Visiting PhD Researcher
Victor Alembik is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Milan. He works on political professionalisation and political careers in India. His Master’s research focused on populism as a professional strategy for new political entrants. His Ph.D. research focuses on legislators’ political careers, partisan attachment and party-switching. Victor is very excited to spend Spring 2023 as a visiting Ph.D with the EVaP project at the University of Amsterdam.