Stefan Müller

Assistant Professor

University College Dublin

About Me

I am an Assistant Professor and Ad Astra Fellow in the School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin. Previously, I was a Senior Researcher at the University of Zurich.

My research focuses on political representation, party competition, political communication, public opinion, quantitative text analysis, and the application of computer vision techniques. My work has been published or is forthcoming in the American Political Science Review, The Journal of Politics, Political Communication, Political Science Research and Methods, and the European Journal of Political Research, among others.

I am a founding member of the Connected_Politics Lab, a non-resident fellow at the Digital Democracy Lab at the University of Zurich, a member of the UCD Energy Institute, co-author of the quanteda R package, and maintainer of the Irish Polling Indicator.

Full CV

Publications

Google Scholar Profile

Peer-Reviewed Journal Publications

2021. “Gender, Candidate Emotional Expression, and Voter Reactions During Televised Debates.” American Political Science Review online first (with Constantine Boussalis, Travis G. Coan, and Mirya R. Holman).

2021. “The Temporal Focus of Campaign Communication.” The Journal of Politics online first.

2021. “Social Media and Political Agenda Setting.” Political Communication online first (with Fabrizio Gilardi, Theresa Gessler, and Maël Kubli).

2021. “Voter Expectations of Government Formation in Coalition Systems: The Importance of the Information Context.” European Journal of Political Research online first (with Shaun Bowler and Gail McElroy).

2021. “The Incumbency Advantage in Second-Order PR Elections: Evidence from the Irish Context, 1942–2019.” Electoral Studies 71: 102331 (with Michael Jankowski).

2021. “Social Media and Policy Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Switzerland.” Swiss Political Science Review 27(2): 243–256 (with Fabrizio Gilardi, Theresa Gessler, and Maël Kubli).

2020. “Media Coverage of Campaign Promises Throughout the Electoral Cycle.” Political Communication 37(5): 696–718.

2020. “The Electoral Cycle Effect in Parliamentary Democracies.” Political Science Research and Methods 8(4): 795–802 (with Tom Louwerse).

2020. “Campaigns and the Selection of Policy-Seeking Representatives.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 45(3): 397–431 (with Shaun Bowler and Gail McElroy).

2019. “Do Voters Really Prefer More Choice? Determinants of Support for Personalised Electoral Systems.” Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 29(2): 262–281 (with Michael Jankowski).

2018. “quanteda: An R Package for the Quantitative Analysis of Textual Data.” Journal of Open Source Software 3(30): 774 (with Kenneth Benoit, Kohei Watanabe, Haiyan Wang, Paul Nulty, Adam Obeng, and Akitaka Matsuo).

2018. “Voter Preferences and Party Loyalty under Cumulative Voting: Political Behaviour after Electoral Reform in Bremen and Hamburg.” Electoral Studies 51: 93–102 (with Shaun Bowler and Gail McElroy).

2018. “Assessing the Influence of Neutral Grounds on Match Outcomes.” International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport 18(6): 892–905 (with Liam Kneafsey).

Other Publications

2021. Quanteda Tutorials (with Kohei Watanabe). https://tutorials.quanteda.io.

Current Research

Conditionally Accepted Papers

Evidence for the Irrelevance of Irrelevant Events. Political Science Research and Methods: conditionally accepted (with Liam Kneafsey).

Building Research Infrastructures to Study Digital Technology and Politics: Lessons from Switzerland. PS: Political Science & Politics: conditionally accepted (with Fabrizio Gilardi, Lucien Baumgartner, Clau Dermont, Karsten Donnay, Theresa Gessler, Maël Kubli, and Lucas Leemann).

Are Irish Voters Moving to the Left? Irish Political Studies: conditionally accepted (with Aidan Regan).

Papers Under Review

Issue Ownership and Agenda Setting in the 2019 Swiss National Elections. Swiss Political Science Review: revise & resubmit (with Fabrizio Gilardi, Theresa Gessler, and Maël Kubli).

Discourse Wars and ‘Mask Diplomacy’: China’s Global Image Management in Times of Crisis (with Samuel Brazys and Alexander Dukalskis).

Ongoing Projects

Explaining (In)Congruence Between Politicians' Campaign Promises and Subsequent Legislative Priorities (with Naofumi Fujimura).

The Politics of Nostalgia in Europe (with Sven-Oliver Proksch).

Politicians' Multimodal Twitter Communication (with James P Cross, Derek Greene, and Martijn Schoonvelde).

Wolf Warriors, Messaging Agility, and China’s Public Diplomacy (with Samuel Brazys and Alexander Dukalskis).

Retrospective and Prospective Issue Responsiveness (with Theres Matthieß).

If you would like to get access to the latest version of a paper, feel free to send me an e-mail.

Teaching

Module Instructor: Undergraduate Level

Parties and Party Competition (University College Dublin; Spring 2020). [Syllabus]
Representation and Party Competition (University of Zurich; Autumn 2019 & Spring 2020). [Syllabus]

Module Instructor: Postgraduate Level

Connected_Politics (University College Dublin; Spring 2021). [Syllabus]
Introduction to Statistics (University College Dublin; Autumn 2020). [Syllabus]
Political Representation and Policy Preferences (University of Zurich; Autumn 2019 & Spring 2020). [Syllabus]
Quantitative Text Analysis (University of Zurich; Autumn 2019 & Spring 2020). [Syllabus]

Workshop Instructor

2021: Quantitative Text Analysis using R and quanteda, University of Hamburg.
2020: Creating and Hosting an Academic Personal Website Using Hugo and GitHub, Connected_Politics Lab, University College Dublin (with Natalia Umansky).
2020: Quantitative Approaches to Linguistic and Textual Analysis and Data Visualisation using R, Scottish Graduate School of Social Science (with Theresa Gessler).
2020: Reproducible Research with Git and GitHub, Connected_Politics Lab, University College Dublin.
2020: Quantitative Text Analysis with quanteda, University of Bremen (with Kenneth Benoit).
2020: Quantitative Text Analysis for Absolute Beginners, COMPTEXT, Innsbruck (with Kenneth Benoit).
2020: Wrangling and Visualising Data Using R, Connected_Politics Lab, University College Dublin.
2019: Quantitative Text Analysis for Absolute Beginners, POLTEXT Pre-Conference Events, Tokyo.
2019: Introduction to Quantitative Text Analysis, Kobe University.
2019: An Introduction to Quantitative Text Analysis Using R and quanteda, Swiss National Science Foundation, Bern.
2019: Quantitative Text Analysis, University of Düsseldorf.
2019: An Introduction to Quantitative Text Analysis Using R and quanteda, University of Bergen.
2018: An Introduction to the Quanteda Package for Quantitative Text Analysis, Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin.
2018: Introduction to Quantitative Text Analysis Using R, Methods Center of the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences.
2018: Introduction to Quantitative Text Analysis Using Quanteda, WZB Berlin Social Science Center (with Kohei Watanabe).
2017: Data Wrangling and Visualisation Using R, Trinity Research in Social Science.

Irish Polling Indicator

The Irish Polling Indicator is a joint project with Tom Louwerse. We combine all opinion polls for the Dáil Éireann into daily estimates of public support for Irish parties. The website of the Polling Indicator provides various interactive graphs and detailed information on the underlying method.

The figure below (updated automatically after the release of new polls) summarises the most recent estimates of party support.

Curriculum Vitae

Full CV (PDF)

Academic Positions


2020–	Assistant Professor and Ad Astra Fellow University College Dublin – School of Politics and International Relations – Connected_Politics Lab (founding member)
2019–2020	Senior Researcher (Oberassistent) University of Zurich, Department of Political Science

Education


2015–2019	PhD in Political Science Trinity College Dublin, Department of Political Science
2017–2018	Postgraduate Certificate in Statistics Trinity College Dublin, School of Computer Science and Statistics
2014–2015	Master of Science in Politics and Public Policy Trinity College Dublin, Department of Political Science
2011–2014	Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Sociology University of Bonn, Department of Political Science and Sociology

Visiting Positions


2020–	University of Zurich, Digital Democracy Lab
2019	Kobe University, Graduate School of Law
2019	Trinity College Dublin, Department of Political Science
2018	EUROLAB at GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Cologne