Doctoral Researcher at Complex Social and Computational Systems Lab, University of Graz, Austria

Computational Social Scientist

Physicist

I am a doctoral researcher in computational social science at the IDea_Lab (Interdisciplinary Digital Lab) at the University of Graz, where I work in the Complex Social and Computational Systems group under the supervision of Jana Lasser.

I originally trained as a physicist, completing my Bachelor’s degree at Graz University of Technology and my Master’s degree at the University of Graz, with a focus on theoretical and computational physics. In the fall term of 2019, I spent half a year at Macquarie University, where I conducted research in the Astrophysics Lab.

My academic path shifted toward the social sciences through my interest in real-world political and social problems. In my Master’s thesis, I studied changes in the ontology of truth in American politics leading up to the 2022 Midterm elections using large-scale Twitter data. Since then, my work has focused on understanding social and political dynamics through the analysis of large-scale social media datasets. I work with millions of messages from platforms such as Twitter and Telegram, using methods from machine learning and natural language processing to identify patterns, emerging narratives, and changes in public discourse over time.

My research centers on narratives, ranging from conspiracy narratives to broader political and media narratives. I am interested in how social technologies shape democratic structures, and in how narratives are formed, amplified, and contested in online environments. I also work with traditional media data to study framing processes and how media narratives influence collective understanding of political and social issues.

Beyond academia, I am passionate about communicating this research to broader publics. I engage in science communication through work with schools, summer schools, and public formats such as exhibitions, focusing on questions around democracy, social media, power, and platform capitalism.

Across my work, I value interdisciplinarity, political responsibility, and inclusive approaches to knowledge production.