Philipp Matthias Lutscher

Philipp Matthias Lutscher is a Research Fellow at the University of Oslo's Department of Political Science and a non-resident fellow at the Digital Democracy Lab (University of Zurich). He specializes in the intersection of comparative politics, political communication, and quantitative methods, focusing on digital technologies used by authoritarian regimes, including online censorship, propaganda, and indoctrination. His work also examines how such strategies are increasingly adopted in democracies. Lutscher holds a PhD from the University of Konstanz (2020), an MSc from the University of Essex (2016), and prior degrees from Konstanz. His affiliations include the ELDAR project (Emergence, Life, and Demise of Autocratic Regimes) and the Digital Society Initiative.

Key research interests include cyber operations, information control in autocracies, and contentious politics. He has published in journals such as the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and Journal of Peace Research. Recent work explores the effectiveness of hard propaganda in democracies and the resilience of news websites under censorship. His projects include global datasets on education policies and analyses of communication patterns during protests.

Lutscher teaches courses on comparative politics and research design. His grants and collaborations span institutions like the Excellence Cluster 'Politics of Inequality' (Konstanz) and the Social Science Research Council. He co-leads projects on digital contention and indoctrination, emphasizing interdisciplinary methods to study autocratic strategies in the digital age.