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.

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. You can watch me explain my work at the Migration Policy Centre here. 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 X at @lenka_drazanova where I regularly tweet about my new work and publications as well as social science research in general.