Sascha Riaz

Hi there! I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Government at Harvard University. My research is broadly situated at the intersection of political behavior, comparative political economy, and applied statistics. Specifically, I study the underlying causal drivers of increasing fragmentation in European societies, with a special focus on immigration, xenophobia and inequality. Methodologically, I specialize in quasi-experimental research designs to draw causal inferences from observational data.

At Harvard, I am affiliated with the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies. I am also affiliated with the Transformations of Democracy research group at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. I hold masters degrees in Statistics (2020) and International Relations (2017).

In autumn 2022, I will join Nuffield College at the University of Oxford as a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow.

Publications

Freedom of Movement Restrictions Inhibit the Psychological Integration of Refugees (with Hanno Hilbig). Forthcoming, The Journal of Politics.

Working Papers

World War I, Nationalism, and the Rise of the Nazi Party (with Felix Haass, Alexander De Juan, Carlo Koos, and Thomas Tichelbaecker). R&R, American Political Science Review.
Out-group Threat and Xenophobic Hate Crimes — Evidence of Local Intergroup Conflict Dynamics between Immigrants and Natives (with Daniel Bischof and Markus Wagner). R&R, The Journal of Politics.
Media Monopolies Increase Misperceptions about Immigration: Evidence from German Local Newspapers (with Hanno Hilbig).
Local Newspaper Decline and Political Polarization in Multi-Party Systems (with Fabio Ellger, Hanno Hilbig, and Philipp Tillmann).
Refugee Labor Market Access Increases Support for Migration (with Anselm Hager and Hanno Hilbig).
Natural Disasters and Green Party Support (with Hanno Hilbig).
After the Genocide: Proximity to Victims and Support for Transitional Justice (with Volha Charnysh).
Inequality and Xenophobia

Work in Progress

Electoral Effects of Local Exposure to Refugees (with Jeremy Ferwerda).
The Gendered Effects of Authoritarian Indoctrination -- Evidence from a Regression Kink Design (with Nourhan Elsayed, Hanno Hilbig, and Daniel Ziblatt).

This website uses the GitHub Pages minimal theme, and is inspired by Shiro Kuriwaki's website.