Welcome to my academic website! I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at Aarhus University, working on a project that seeks to understand what politicians believe about voter behavior. Before joining Aarhus University, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Royal Holloway (University of London), within the ERC-funded “New parties in the news” project. In 2022, I obtained a Ph.D. in Political Science from McGill University, with a thesis on the political and electoral consequences of economic shocks. During my Ph.D. studies, I was a member of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship (CSDC).

My work lies at the intersection of political and voting behavior, comparative politics, and international political economy. Using observational and experimental methodologies, I study how economic and political shocks reshape public attitudes and voting—especially in periods of high uncertainty and disruption. I examine how voters, party activists, and elites respond in the short and long run, and I model elections themselves as informational and engagement shocks that can reconfigure conflict and seed lasting realignments.

My main regional focus is on Central and Eastern Europe, but my work looks at these phenomena in Western European and North American contexts as well. Before academia, I spent over a decade as a political communication advisor and consultant in Central and Eastern Europe, experience that informs both my research and public engagement.

My work was published in The Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, European Journal of Political Research, and Political Science Research and Methods.

If you want to get in touch, please contact me at costin.ciobanu [at] ps.au.dk or costin.ciobanu [at] gmail.com.