PhD Candidate in Political Psychology
I am a PhD candidate at the University of Southampton, working at the intersection of political science, psychology, geography, and complexity science.
Beyond my research, I continue to engage with social impact projects. I serve as a board member for Yazidi@school and remain involved in the global investigation project on Border Profiteers. As a science communication enthusiast, I am also a co-organizer of the Psychology theme for Pint of Science Southampton 2026.
I know how challenging it can be to transition from practitioner roles into academia and how difficult the PhD funding landscape can be. Having learned a lot from navigating PhD applications across countries, I am always happy to support others in this process. Feel free to send me an email if you would like guidance or advice.
My PhD research focuses on democratic resilience, identity salience, and geographical imaginatives. I am fascinated by the everyday politics of individuals—how people understand themselves within complex social and political systems, which cognitive shortcuts (heuristics) they use to make decisions (particularly political ones), and the role of emotions and material conditions in shaping these decisions. I also study how these individual processes interact with narratives and group dynamics, and how they scale up to observable macro patterns such as public trust, distrust, or shifting voting behaviors.
My academic background is interdisciplinary: I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Humboldt University Berlin (Germany) and a Master’s degree in Migration Studies from Linköping University (Sweden) and Pompeu Fabra University (Spain). I am a mixed-methods enthusiast and practice-oriented researcher, currently expanding into computational social science and modeling.
Posts coming soon.
Email: h.reichelt@soton.ac.uk
Check out my LinkedIn.