Benjamin Schlegel

Dr. Benjamin Schlegel is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Political Science at the University of Zurich's Faculty of Arts, specializing in methods and quantitative analysis. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Zurich (2022) with a dissertation on strategic voting and maintains active teaching responsibilities across multiple institutions including UZH and the University of Lucerne.

His research focuses on political behavior, particularly electoral studies and strategic voting dynamics, where he examines how political information and cognitive capacity interact in voter decision-making. He has significant expertise in quantitative methods and statistical programming, especially through the R language which forms the core of his methodological toolkit. His work extends into political data journalism where he applies web development skills (HTML/CSS/JavaScript/D3) to create interactive data visualizations.

His publication trends reveal a consistent trajectory from bachelor's work on globalization attitudes through doctoral research on strategic voting toward his 2025 textbook on Social Science Data Analysis with R. This progression demonstrates deepening methodological sophistication with increasing focus on statistical programming applications in political science. His 2023 Electoral Studies article represents his most significant peer-reviewed contribution, challenging assumptions about political information's role in strategic voting.

As an educator, he leads the StatGuide initiative - a digital platform for personalized methods education - and teaches advanced courses including R Programming Skills, Statistical Models in Political Analysis, and Web Development for Data Visualization. His teaching philosophy emphasizes practical coding skills and real-world application of statistical methods.