Hi, I’m Christine!
I am a Dutch PhD Student in Politics at the University of Oxford. I initially completed my undergraduate degree in Liberal Arts at Erasmus University College in Rotterdam in 2018, with a double major in politics and sociology (and a dabble in computer science). Once completed, I then moved to Oxford in 2018 to start an MPhil degree in European Politics and Society. During this time, whilst working on my master’s thesis, I was first introduced to text-as-data methods, which I applied to Dutch parliamentary speeches. I was quite taken by this new trend in political methodology, and so when I commenced my PhD mid-pandemic in 2020, I continued working with parliamentary speech data, yet this time through a more comparative lens.
In my PhD dissertation, I hope to open up the black box of coalition bargaining during a government’s incumbency. I theorize parliamentary debate may be an interesting proxy to disentangle what strategies government parties are pursing to maximize their share of the incumbency pie. In doing so, I analyse differences in speech behaviour between parties, for over 80 coalition governments from eight different countries. You can read more about my research here.
When not busy trying to debug my code, or making my way through the ever increasing literature on text analysis, I am a proud member of the Hertford College community, where I sing in the chapel choir every Sunday of term. I also love watercolour painting and if you’re ever visiting the Oxford Department of Politics and IR, you may spot a painting or two of mine on the community art wall.
For more information you can download an up-to-date CV here: