Elisa Deiss-Helbig

I am a Research Fellow at the Zukunftskolleg and associated member of the Research Group “German politics". My research interests lie in party politics and political representation, with a focus on the representation of politically marginalized groups.

Working on my dissertation, I have focused on the role of political parties with regard to the descriptive representation of citizens with immigrant origins. Over the last years, I have become more interested in studying the roots of political inequality. As part of two DFG-funded research projects, which I am leading together with two colleagues from Sciences Po and the University of Trier, I investigate the extent to which inequalities in substantive representation of a large number of social groups can be traced back to electoral promises and their implementation. Linked to this, a further focus lies on the question of the conditions under which voters respond to group appeals in electoral promises and policies.

Previously, I held posts as doctoral and postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Social Sciences at the University of Stuttgart and at the Émile Durkheim Center (Sciences Po Bordeaux). I received my PhD from the University of Stuttgart in 2018. In addition to Stuttgart and Bordeaux, I also lectured at Sciences Po in Nancy.