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May 14, 2009

The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) is pleased to announce the hire of four additional employees at the CSES Secretariat. Three of the employees are located at GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Germany and the fourth is located at the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan in the United States. The team will work closely together on the preparation of CSES Module 3 and in advancing research using the CSES.

Kathrin Busch will be working for the project half-time in Cologne, Germany. She has studied Cultural Sciences at European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), majoring in comparative social science and linguistics. Her research interests include political culture, social capital and democratic progression, and the sociology of religion. She is also interested in methodological components of quantitative analysis and has worked previously with datasets from the ISSP. Kathrin also has professional training and experience as a graphic designer.

Matias Bargsted will be working for the project half-time in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Matias is a PhD candidate in political science from the University of Michigan. His dissertation focuses on the interrelationship between voter cognition and institutional properties of democratic polities, as well as their party systems. He also has a strong interest in voting behavior and spatial models of party completion, and experience in statistical computation and multilevel data analysis. Matias has worked previously for the CSES, on CSES Module 2.

Jessica Fortin will be working for the project full-time in Mannheim, Germany. Jessica received her PhD from McGill University in political science in 2008. She was awarded a post-doctoral research fellowship by the Fond Québécois de Recherche sur la Société et la Culture at Leuphana Universitaet Lueneburg in Germany during 2008-2009. Her research interests include former communist countries, founding elections, state capacity, macro-comparative research designs and measurement issues.

Sebastian Netscher will be working for the project half-time in Cologne, Germany. In 2008 he finished a diploma degree at the University of Cologne, having studied sociology, economy, political sciences and empirical social and economic research. His thesis was on the empirical analysis of migration profits. He has worked previously for the GESIS – Liebniz Institute for Social Sciences as a research assistant at the Center of Excellence Women and Science. He has research interests in migration, migration movements, and inter- and transnational policy.

The CSES Secretariat is in cooperation between the Center for Political Studies and GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, with support from the American National Science Foundation, German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, University of Michigan, and governments of several German Länder.