Biography

Lenka Dražanová is a Research Fellow at the Migration Policy Centre. Her research interests lie in the fields of political behaviour, public opinion, comparative politics and political sociology. Lenka is interested in the factors that contribute to the formation of public opinion and attitudes (particularly attitudes to historically disadvantaged groups) using quantitative methods. Lenka has published in a number of peer-reviewed international academic journals such as Political Studies, Acta Politica, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, International Journal of Intercultural Relations and others.

Lenka´s primary research agenda has two specific areas that revolve around the question whether we can really identify a current shift towards less tolerant, populist and nationalist societies and politics (especially in Europe), and if so, how we can explain the underlying causes. Firstly, she examines the development of populism, nationalism and xenophobia and the challenges they provide to (liberal) democracy. Secondly, she focuses on comparative political behaviour and political/social attitudes and their interdependence with policy, institutions, political actors and cultures.

In her book 'Education and Tolerance' Lenka analyses quantitatively cross-national variations in the effect of education on social and political tolerance based on a large-scale survey. Lenka received her PhD (Summa Cum Laude) in political science from the Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2016. She holds additional degrees in political science from Central European University (Hungary) and Charles University (Czech Republic). She was also awarded a Humboldt Postdoc Scholarship at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin under the German Excellence Initiative.

Research projects, clusters and working groups

Ongoing

• Refugee Entrepreneurship in the EU: Sparking Grass-roots Innovation, Civic Empowerment and Transnational Connectivity
• Algorithmic fairness for asylum seekers and refugees
• Observatory of public attitudes to migration
• Enhancing migration narrative to develop further union’s long-term actions

Completed

• IT tools and methods for managing migration flows

Fields of expertise

Recent research output

• DRAŽANOVÁ, Lenka; RUHS, Martin (2024), Fair protection : public perceptions of fairness in asylum decision-making, Working Paper
• JEANNET, Anne-Marie; DRAŽANOVÁ, Lenka (2023), Cohort differences in attitudes toward sexual orientation : the formative political climate as a socializing agent, Article
• DRAŽANOVÁ, Lenka; GONNOT, Jerome (2023), Attitudes toward immigration in Europe : cross-regional differences, Article
• JEANNET, Anne-Marie; DRAŽANOVÁ, Lenka (2023), Blame it on my youth : the origins of attitudes towards immigration, Article
• DRAŽANOVÁ, Lenka; GONNOT, Jerome; HEIDLAND, Tobias; FINJA, Krüger (2023), Which individual-level factors explain public attitudes toward immigration? : a meta-analysis, Article
• SCHULTE-CLOOS, Julia; DRAŽANOVÁ, Lenka (2023), Shared identity in crisis : a comparative study of support for the EU in the face of the Russian threat, Working Paper