Joshua Cova

Joshua Cova is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany. He holds a PhD from the DYNAMICS graduate school (joint program between Humboldt University Berlin and the Hertie School), an MPhil in European Politics from the University of Oxford, and a BA in History from King’s College London. Prior to academia, he worked in consulting and EU institutions.

Research Focus: His work examines the political economy of European countries, focusing on interactions between politics, wage dynamics, income stagnation, and labor market institutions. Methodologically, he specializes in text-as-data approaches, natural language processing, and quantitative techniques like time series and panel data analysis.

Teaching: He taught Political Economy of Inequality at the University of Cologne (Fall 2024) and Statistics I at the Hertie School (2021–2022), achieving median student satisfaction scores of 5/5 and 10/10 respectively. Course materials and syllabi are openly available on his GitHub repository.

Publications: His research appears in journals such as European Union Politics, Journal of European Social Policy, and European Journal of Industrial Relations. He designs interdisciplinary courses blending historical trajectories of inequality, comparative capitalism, and modern labor market challenges.