ERC grant

I was recently awarded an European Research Council Starting Grant for the project Fem-LEAD: Female Leaders and Effects from African Droughts. The project, with funds of 1.5 million Euro, runs for five years 2024-2028.

This competitive grant will allow me to establish a new research group, consisting of collaborators that are internationally renowned researchers and excellent postdoctoral fellows as well as research assistants, to be recruited.

In brief, Fem-LEAD seeks to understand the connections between weather-related disasters and women’s political standing in politics in African countries. The project focuses on drought, public opinion and political representation. How and why do droughts affect citizens’ demand for female politicians? How and why do droughts affect the supply of female candidates and the presence of elected women? 

Fem-LEAD plans to examine a combination of public opinion data: observational surveys, in-depth interviews and survey experiments. It will also study political representation, with access to unique data on women as local candidates and representatives in African countries, not the least South Africa. 

The project has designed studies where high-quality data is available. Beyond its specific aims, work within the project will likely be extended to study processes related to this topic, e.g., but not limited to: additional geographic regions, how other types of shocks affect attitudes and representation, the effects of disasters on broader types of political variables, or the impact from women’s political presence on different outcomes.