I am a social scientist and Research Fellow at the European University Institute’s Migration Policy Centre. I am interested in untangling some of the phenomena we see in the contemporary world, such as increased polarization within groups and social identities, the rise of authoritarianism and a shift towards less tolerant societies. While mostly trained as a political scientist, my research interests lie at the intersection of political science, sociology, and political psychology. More specifically, I mainly analyze political behaviour, public opinion and individual attitudes formation especially towards historically disadvantaged groups and the conditions under which these attitudes emerge using advanced quantitative methods.

Currently, I am a Work Package leader and Steering Committee member of the H2020 ITFLOWS project. You can watch me explain what the MPC´s role in the project is here. I also lead the MPC’s work in the E-MINDFUL project where I also serve as an Advisory Board member. I am also a member of the collaborative AFAR project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation in the frame of its “Challenges for Europe” programme.

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. 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.

You can also follow me on Twitter at @lenka_drazanova where I regularly tweet about my new work and publications as well as social science research in general.