Welcome to my website, and thank you for taking interest in me and my work!

Since March 2020, I am a senior researcher at Eurac Research (Bozen/Bolzano, Italy); at first at the Institute for Minority Rights, from October 2022 – April 2023 at the Center for Advanced Studies, and since May 2023 at the Center for Autonomy Experience. I am also part of the core team of the transdisciplinary cross-institute research area Gender Dynamics – Eurac Research. My research focuses on different types of diversity (e.g., gender, minorities, migration), on enabling social and political participation, and on the social determinants of health.

Before coming to Eurac, I was a post-doctoral research associate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy (Fellow-Group: “Dis[cover]ability and Indicators for Inclusion”) and at the Chair of Sociology of Diversity, Technical University of Munich (both from July 2015 – February 2020). Since August 2020, I’m teaching as a Privatdozentin at the Chair of Social Determinants of Health, Department of Sport and Health Sciences at TUM, primarily on gender, diversity and health.

I completed my cumulative habilitation at the Technical University of Munich in April 2020, and in August 2020 I was awarded the venia legendi in Health Sciences with Special Focus on Diversity Governance and the title of Privatdozentin, which certifies that I now possess all prerequisites for full university professorships, and allows me to supervise PhD students. My habilitation is titled “Fostering Political Participation, Representation, and Well-Being: Why Diversity and Inclusion Governance Matters“. In December 2022, I was awarded the Habilitation Prize by the Freunde der TUM e.V.

I completed my PhD in Political Science at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, in March 2015 (Dissertation: The Impact of Europeanization on Minority Communities, published with Springer VS, 2016). I also hold Mag. Phil. (M.A.) degrees in Political Science and English and American Studies (both awarded with distinction) from the University of Innsbruck and a B.A. degree in Scandinavian Studies from the University of Vienna. From October 2016 until March 2019, I was an external lecturer at the Institute for Political Science, University of Innsbruck. I was also a guest researcher at the Institute for Comparative Federalism (EURAC Research, Bozen/Bolzano, Italy) from May to August 2018; during my PhD, I was a visiting graduate student researcher at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle (USA).

My main research interests are gender and diversity, the inclusion and participation of diverse and often societally marginalized groups (e.g minorities, persons with disabilities, persons with a migratory background, refugees), social determinants of health, health and diversity, minority and migration policy, minorities and health inequalities, and diversity governance. I’m also interested in political participation at the regional level, transnational civil society and activist networks, social movements, Europeanization processes “top-down” and “bottom-up”, as well as regionalism and federalism with a focus on the ‘Europe of the regions’.

My work has been published in peer-reviewed journals, edited volumes and monographs and presented at international conferences; I’m also available for invited talks on the topics mentioned above, as well as for PhD supervision. I have completed the Zertifikat Hochschullehre Bayern – Vertiefungsstufe (200 working hours of higher education didactics training) in 2019.

Should you have any questions about me or my work, please do not hesistate to contact me through the e-mail address provided below. I’m also open for collaborations, especially in comparative international settings, and I would be happy to hear about any ideas for joint projects.