Florian S. Schaffner
Postdoctoral Researcher
Department of Political Science
University of Zurich
About Me
I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Political Science at the University of Zurich. My research focuses on political behavior, political psychology, affective polarization, representation, and direct democracy. I am also interested in methodological issues in computational political science, such as quantitative text analysis and machine learning. I received my PhD from the University of Oxford, where I examined the effects of empathy on political behavior.
Education
DPhil in Politics
University of Oxford, 2024
MSc in Comparative Politics
London School of Economics and Political Science, 2018
BA in Social Sciences
University of Zurich, 2016
Publications
Schaffner, Florian S. (2020) Moaners, Gloaters, and Bystanders: Perceived Fairness of the United Kingdom’s 2016 Referendum on the European Union. Political Studies, 69(2), 278–306. Link
Working Papers
Comparing the Performance of Machine Learning Ensembles for Multilevel Regression and Poststratification Models (with Philipp Broniecki, Lucas Leemann, and Reto Wüest)
Empathy and Affective Polarization After the Brexit Referendum
Parties and the People: Why Do Parties Support Direct Democracy? (with Sarah Engler and Lucas Leemann)
Teaching
Natural Language Processing for Political Science (Postgraduate), Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Spring Semester 2025
Master’s Thesis Colloquium (Postgraduate), Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Spring Semester 2025
Preparation for the Research Seminar Political Data Journalism (Postgraduate), Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Fall Semester 2024
Political Systems and Theories I, Lectures (Undergraduate), Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Fall Semester 2024
Quantitative Text Analysis (Postgraduate), Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Spring Semester 2024
Political Systems and Theories II, Tutorials (Undergraduate), Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Spring Semester 2024
Political Systems and Theories I, Tutorials (Undergraduate), Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Fall Semester 2023
Quantitative Text Analysis (Postgraduate), Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Spring Semester 2023
Political Systems and Theories II, Tutorials (Undergraduate), Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Spring Semester 2023
Political Systems and Theories I, Tutorials (Undergraduate), Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Fall Semester 2022
Intermediate Statistics (Postgraduate), Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, Michaelmas Term 2021
Intermediate Statistics (Postgraduate), Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, Michaelmas Term 2020
Thesis Supervision (Undergraduate), Wadham College, University of Oxford, Trinity Term 2020
Introduction to Statistics (Postgraduate), Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, Michaelmas Term 2019
Software
autoMrP: Improving MrP with Ensemble Learning. R package, available on CRAN
bodleianlibraries: Search the Bodleian Libraries Catalogue (SOLO) directly from the R console. R package, available on GitHub
websearchr: Access Domains and Search Popular Websites. R package, available on CRAN
xaringanbeamer: Beamer theme for the xaringan package. R package, available on GitHub
Xplorer: Convenient Data Exploration. R package, available on GitHub
Contact
Dr. Florian Schaffner
Department of Political Science
University of Zurich
Affolternstrasse 56
8050 Zurich
Switzerland
Office: AFL-H-304
E-mail: schaffner@ipz.uzh.ch