The people behind INCONEX

Our team

Based at the Salzburg Centre of European Union Studies (SCEUS), University of Salzburg.

Principal Investigator

Lucy Kinski

Dr Lucy Kinski is an Assistant Professor in European Union Politics at the Salzburg Centre of European Union Studies and the Department of Political Science at the University of Salzburg. Her research focuses on parliamentary representation in the EU multi-level system, combining EU studies with comparative politics. She is the PI of the ERC Starting Grant project INCONEX. She has published in journals such as the Journal of European Public Policy, Environmental Politics, Political Studies and the Journal of Common Market Studies; her monograph European Representation in EU National Parliaments (Palgrave 2021) was shortlisted for the UACES best book prize 2021.

Project Assistant

Clint Claessen

Clint Claessen is a researcher within the INCONEX project at SCEUS. His primary focus is measuring representative absence in political speech across Austria, Germany, Spain and the European Parliament. He also investigates party leaders and political careers, applying sequence analysis, machine-learning and text-as-data methods. Formerly a PhD student at the Institute of Political Science, University of Basel.

PhD Researcher

Anna-Lotta Dechow

Anna-Lotta Dechow is a PhD researcher within INCONEX and a doctoral student in political science at the University of Salzburg. Her doctoral research examines populist party representation through a constructivist lens, and she is interested in deliberative democracy with a focus on sortition-based democratic innovations. She holds an MSc in Political Theory from the LSE and a BA in PPE from Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf.

PhD Researcher

Oscar Mendoza Hernandez

Oscar Mendoza Hernandez is a PhD researcher within INCONEX and a doctoral student in political science at the University of Salzburg. His research focuses on youth political representation, and he is also interested in polarization and conflict resolution. He holds a BA in Political Science from the Higher School of Economics and an MA in Public Policy from the Central European University.

Student Assistant

Lena Rittinger

Lena Rittinger is a final-semester MSc student in ‘Socio-Ecological Economics and Policy’. Her research interests lie in the political economy of inequalities, informed by an intersectional approach with an emphasis on critical migration and queer-feminist perspectives. She contributes to INCONEX through data and representational claims analysis.

Former project members

Student Assistant

Martyna Chmura

Martyna Chmura is a Master’s student in Public Policy at Sciences Po Paris, specializing in Digital & New Technology, with a BA in Political Science from Leiden University. Her focus lies at the intersection of technology and democracy.

Student Assistant

Katharina Stierhof

Katharina Stierhof is a final-semester Master’s student of European Union Studies at SCEUS, University of Salzburg, with an interdisciplinary and international background. She supported INCONEX through data and literature research and manual content analysis.

Student Assistant

Julia Gorny

Julia Gorny is finishing her MSc thesis in ‘Socio-Ecological Economics and Policy’. A scholarship holder of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, she applies a decolonial, ecological and intersectional lens to her work — ecological economics, climate change, post-growth and inequalities.