John M. Michaelis

I am a PhD researcher in Political Science at the European University Institute in Florence. My work centres on comparative party politics, with a particular focus on how political identity and affective polarization shape party competition and citizens' engagement with some political issues over others. I am supervised by Anton Hemerijck and Elias Dinas.

I will be visiting Jan Rovny at the Center for European Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po, Paris from September to December 2026.

My research interests lie at the intersection of political polarization, identity, and issue politics. In my dissertation, I examine the relationship between affective polarization and opposition to cultural issues, asking whether cross-national variation and selective opposition is better understood as a reactive consequence of national political identity conflict. I test the implications this has for how national political contexts shape the political conflict lines and strategic positioning of political parties across Europe.

Before joining the European University Institute, I was a Research Assistant in the EUDENTIFY project at the European Studies Department at the University of Amsterdam with Theresa Kuhn. 

I hold a MSc in Political Science from the University of Amsterdam and a BSc in Psychology from the Erasmus University Rotterdam (2020). I am also a member of the European Debate Initiative, which was awarded the European Citizen's Price in 2021. You can find my full CV here.

Working Papers

• The emergence and political relevance of supranational identity in Europe, 1971–2024 (with Theresa Kuhn and Armin Seimel). Currently under review, preprint available here.

Ongoing work

• How Partisan Outgroup Cues Drive Engagement with Policy Issues: Experimental Evidence from Germany (To be presented at ACES 2026).

• Mapping Group-Based Political Conflict: A Comparative Analysis of Press Releases and Parliamentary Speeches.