People
We run on a crowdsourced model without institutional support so it is important to recognize the people who have contributed to the HUMAN Surveys project. The individuals below either helped with funding support, contributed their time to developing scripts, and/or helped the project gain publicity through their publications. In addition to people listed here, Maureen Nyirenda, Joseph Mwanza, Joaquín Concha, Matthew Placek, Giorgio Farace, Demi Chu, Han Isha, and others have also contributed to the development of the scripting framework.
Andrew Klassen
Chief Code Monkey / Coordinator of Troops, HUMAN Surveys
Andrew started building what would become the HUMAN Surveys scripting framework during his PhD at the Australian National University. This work was necessary for the comparative analysis that went into his thesis on the design of electoral management bodies. Great reading if you have trouble falling asleep. The scripts subsequently expanded as Andrew obsessively added every survey he could get his hands on. He coordinates the project and facilitates others who want to use and develop the scripts for their own research. Andrew divides his time between a full time government job, managing a share house, and studying construction to establish Solarpunk Builders. Andrew remains open to helping others use the HUMAN Surveys scripts, especially if you pay him well as a consultant. He will also help you for free if you are a poor starving student wiling to contribute time to expand the scripting framework.
Roberto Foa
Associate Professor, University of Cambridge
Roberto is co-founder of the Centre for the Future of Democracy at the University of Cambridge and an elected Executive Committee member of the World Values Survey. His research examines quality of government, regimes, and the use of data to address public policy challenges. Roberto is also interested in political methodology, including comparative survey work, index construction and design, geospatial analysis, data harmonisation, and the integration of novel data from search or social media with classical survey-based approaches. His academic work has been published in a wide range of Q1 journals, and cited in publications including The Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Guardian and The Atlantic. Roberto graduated from the University of Oxford with a BA in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. He then completed a Ph.D. at the Harvard University Department of Government. Roberto previously served as a Peter Martin Fellow at the Financial Times, worked for the World Bank as designer of the Indices of Social Development, served as founding president of the Washington European Society, and as Principal Investigator of the World Values Survey in Rwanda (2007), Uzbekistan (2012), Indonesia (2017) and Bangladesh (2018).
Robert Thomson
Professor of Politics, Head of Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Hong Kong
Robert Thomson is Professor of Politics and also serves as Head of the Department of Politics and Public Administration. He joined the University of Hong Kong in 2024, and previously held positions in the Netherlands (University of Groningen), Ireland (Trinity College Dublin) and Australia (Monash University, Melbourne). He received a PhD from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands in 1999. His research focuses on two broad areas of political science: international comparisons of democratic representation and international governance. He co-founded the Comparative Pledges Project, an international network of scholars studying the conditions under which politicians keep and break the campaign promises they make to voters when they enter government office. He is also involved in ongoing research projects on politics in the European Union and on international cooperation in climate change policy.
Nathan Fioritti
Research and Teaching Associate, University of Melbourne/Monash University/Flinders University
Nathan is a mixed-methods scholar whose research focuses on how political parties, voters and the media respond to environmental crises in an increasingly globalised world. He is particularly interested in ecosocial forms of environmental politics that seek to address environmental, social and economic injustices in tandem. Nathan has a PhD in comparative environmental politics from Monash University and BA(Hons) in Media and Communications/Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne. His PhD thesis fro Monash University was titled From Environmental Protection to Climate Justice: Democracy, Internationalisation and the Environment. Nathan has contributed to scripts that combine survey data on voters’ most important national, global and governmental problems from around 80 sources spanning 34 states, using these data to measure environmental issue salience in his thesis. His personal website has more information about current projects.
Elaine Tagert
PhD Candidate / Graduate Instructor, University of Mississippi
Elaine explores the intersections of public opinion, political behavior, and security through a gendered and intersectional lens. Elaine’s work delves into how gender and intersecting identities, such as class and age, shape political attitudes and policy preferences. Central to this research is the examination of the “Guns Versus Butter” debate, particularly how these dynamics manifest across different cultural and political contexts. By utilizing both original survey data from Colombia and harmonized global public opinion datasets, findings challenge traditional models of security, revealing the context-dependent nature of these preferences and highlighting the need for a more inclusive approach to understanding political behavior.
Lisa Sophie Fenner
Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Amsterdam
Lisa is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Amsterdam. Her current research explores the role of Civil Society Organisations in shaping AI legislation in the EU. Lisa obtained her PhD in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge in 2024, where she held the YouGov Studentship at the Department of Politics and International Studies and was an Honorary Benefactors’ Scholar at St John’s College, Cambridge. In addition to her research, she teaches courses in European politics, the history of European integration, and Protest Politics and Social Movements.
Viktor Orri Valgarðsson
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Southampton
Viktor is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the department of Politics and International Relations and former Research Fellow at the TrustGov research project. His fellowship is focused on investigating how political trust might be rebuilt today and his broader research agenda is focused on trust and other types of support; their causes, consequences and changes over time; and how they relate to political participation and different conceptions of democracy and representation.
Margot Mollat
Senior Policy Manager, Transparency International
Margot is a research and policy specialist, with a specific interest in governance, corruption and human rights. Driven by a longstanding commitment to human rights and justice, Margot is also an investigative journalist with over six years of experience and a proven track record of investigating complex issues and delivering evidence-based policy solutions to address the human, environmental, and financial cost of harmful business practices. She holds an Mphil in Public Policy from the University of Cambridge, and was previously a campaigner for Global Witness.
Xavier Romero Vidal
Postdoctoral Fellow, University Carlos III Madrid
Xavier is a political scientist specializing in the evolution of public opinion and political behavior from a comparative perspective. He has served as a postdoctoral fellow at the University Carlos III of Madrid and as a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge. Xavier earned his PhD from Leuphana University Lüneburg. In addition to his research, Xavier has taught and assisted in teaching research methods, comparative politics, political sociology, and European politics. He is also a member of the Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Working Group of the Political Science Association.
Daniella Wenger
Research Associate, Cambridge Centre for the Future of Democracy
Daniella Wenger was previously a Research Associate at the Cambridge Centre for the Future of Democracy. Daniella has a B.Sc. in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley, MPhil in Public Policy from Cambridge University, and Juris Doctor from New York University School of Law. She is currently a Law Clerk at Kirkland & Ellis. As a Research Associate at the Cambridge Centre for the Future of Democracy, Daniella worked on the reports Youth and Satisfaction with Democracy and The Great Reset.
Pao Engelbrecht
Research Assistant, University of Chicago
Pao contributed to HUMAN Surveys as a research assistant at the University of Cambridge after completing his undergraduate studies in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at the University of Manchester and Sciences Po Paris. Subsequently, he went on to pursue an MPhil in International Relations at the University of Oxford, where he investigated the effects of securitised framings of green industrial policies on public opinion through a survey experiment and historical case studies. Since graduating, he has been a Mercator Fellow on International Affairs at the University of Chicago, at the World Bank, and at Germany’s Ministry of Finance. Currently, he works as a research assistant to Prof James Robinson at the University of Chicago and is hoping to start a PhD.