I am a social scientist and Research Fellow at the European University Institute’s Migration Policy Centre. My research focuses on understanding some of the key phenomena shaping contemporary societies, including growing polarization around group identities, the rise of authoritarianism, and declining tolerance. While primarily trained as a political scientist, my work lies at the intersection of political science, sociology, and political psychology. I mainly study public opinion and the formation of individual attitudes—especially toward historically disadvantaged groups—examining the conditions under which these attitudes emerge using advanced quantitative methods.

Before joining the EUI, I was a post-doctoral researcher with the Excellence Initiative at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. I received my PhD (summa cum laude) in Political Science from Humboldt-University’s Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences in 2016 with a dissertation entitled Where and Why are the Higher Educated More Inclined to Tolerate? Explaining the Educational Effect on Tolerance. I hold a Master of Arts in Political Science from Central European University in Hungary (2010) and a BA in Political Science from Charles University in the Czech Republic (2008).

This website provides further information about myself and my research. You can watch me explain my work at the Migration Policy Centre here. Please feel free to contact me at lenka.drazanova[at]eui.eu for more information or if you would like access to any of my working papers or published work.