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.

Aryabin Hasan

Research Assistant
Aryabin Hasan is currently working as a Research Assistant in the EVaP project under the Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam since May, 2023. He has also worked for the European External Action Service as a Trainee in the Political Section of the EU Delegation to India & Bhutan. He has done a Bachelor’s in Political Science from Jadavpur University (Kolkata, India) and a Master’s in Public Administration from Jamia Millia Islamia (New Delhi, India). He has keen interests in Indian politics, electoral studies, new public management, international relations and diplomacy.

Titas Ganguly

Research Assistant
Titas Ganguly is currently working as a Research Assistant with EVaP. He is engaged in processing and coding media reports on violent incidents and identifying religious rallies that have caused political tensions in the Indian state of West Bengal. He recently received his Masters degree in Politics and Sociology of North America from Freie Universitaet Berlin and has a BA in Political Science from Jadavpur University, Kolkata.