Political science

Main research or teaching areas:

• Political polarization
• Public behavior and political psychology
• Comparative politics

Current research and teaching:

Alexander Ryan is, since May 2023, Post-doc at Lund University and the Department of Political Science. He is part of a research project examining how affective political polarization influenced attitudes and behavior related to COVID-19 prevention. One specific focus of the project is the link between elite rhetoric and mass polarization on pandemic-related issues.

Alexander acquired his PhD in political science from Mid Sweden University in 2023. His dissertation centered on affective political polarization in the Nordic region, which included how to measure and study the concept in multiparty contexts, examining explanations for differences in affective polarization and studying its political consequences. In doing so, he relied on a combination of methodological approaches, including longitudinal analyses of affective polarization and survey experiments.

During his PhD studies, Alexander taught courses in comparative politics and democratic theory.