Matthias Avina
I am a scholar of comparative political behavior in Western Europe and the United States, and my research seeks to understand whether advanced democracies are accountable to, and representative of, the public. I have developed two distinct lines of inquiry grappling with these themes. The first examines how parties communicate with voters through their brands and images, and how voters use this information when forming opinions of parties and candidates. The second, conducted as part of my postdoctoral work with Peter Thisted Dinesen, examines how identities and inequalities structure voting behavior and public opinion. My work has been published in the European Journal of Political Research and Party Politics.
I also co-developed the Political Parties Logo Database, the first cross-national database of European party logos.
I received my PhD in political science from the University of Pittsburgh in 2023 and was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen, where I am currently a research affiliate.