Mathias Poertner is an Assistant Professor of Political Science. His research lies at the intersection of political behavior, democratic representation, political parties and movements, and political methodology, with a regional focus on Latin America and Europe. In his work, he uses a variety of methods, including (field, survey, and natural) experiments, surveys, and fieldwork intensive qualitative techniques, to study how political participation and representation are shaped by social identities, such as partisanship, ethnicity, and gender. His first line of research studies these issues by examining how identification with new parties and electoral support for them are shaped by new types of civil society organizations. His second line of research explores the role of social identities in the context of immigrant integration.

His award-winning book, Native Bias: Overcoming Discrimination Against Immigrants (with Donghyun Danny Choi and Nicholas Sambanis), was published by Princeton University Press and his second book, Creating Partisans: The Organizational Roots of New Parties in Latin America, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. His research has also been published in leading journals and has been recognized with multiple awards, including the Gregory Luebbert Prize for the best article in comparative politics, the Emerging Scholar Award from the APSA Political Organizations and Parties section, the Best Book Award from the APSA Experimental Research section, and the Jack Walker Award for an outstanding contribution to research and scholarship on political organizations and parties. Prior to joining LSE, he held a faculty position at Texas A&M University (2019-2021) and a postdoctoral fellowship with the Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) network (2018-2019). He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.