Christine Stedtnitz is a Senior Consultant at the Centre for Strategy and Evaluation Services (CSES) with over 10 years of experience collecting, processing, and analysing qualitative and quantitative data for research projects in various European countries. She joined CSES from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she taught comparative politics.

Christine has worked with academics from across Europe, conducting research on a wide range of topics in political communication, political psychology, and behavioural science. As a researcher, her main research interests have evolved around the way people’s personal circumstances affect the way they think about politics. She has investigated topics including political debates (and what makes them fail or succeed), misinformation (where it comes from and how it affects people’s political opinions), perceptions of status loss or status threat (and how those make people more susceptible to believing false claims from politicians seem sympathetic), fact-checking (and how easily confirmation bias leads us all to disregard even the most compelling evidence), and policy decisions under uncertainty (and why quantifying uncertainty about issues like COVID vaccines and being open and transparent about it is a winning strategy for governments). 

Since joining CSES in the summer of 2023, Christine has been part of various research teams conducting studies and policy evaluations for European public sector clients. Along with CSES colleagues she has conducted studies on foreign interference in EU democracies, new technologies in audit, and methods to calculate the level of error affecting the EU budget. In addition, she has evaluated a Council of Europe project in the area of human rights in biomedicine in Armenia, and an EU policy providing technical support to EU countries carrying out reforms. At present, Christine is working on a study investigating the gender investment gap affecting women-led companies and women-led investment funds for the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA). Christine holds a PhD in government from the University of Essex and an MA from the University of Konstanz. 

Research interests

Behavioural science, digitalisation and AI, education and culture, employment and social affairs, EU politics, foreign interference in EU democracies, human rights, innovation and entrepreneurship, justice and home affairs, local and regional rconomic development, misinformation, political communication, political psychology, public health, public opinion.

Office hours

Tuesday: 16.30 - 17.30

Teaching

4SSPP111: Statistics for Political Science I