Christoffer Hentzer Dausgaard

Christoffer Hentzer Dausgaard

PhD fellow

In my research, I study the role of social group attachments in political behaviour and opinion formation. What are the social and psychological mechanisms that draw members of social groups  towards similar opinions, perceptions and behaviours? It is towards this question that my research seeks to contribute. 

More specifically, I use quantitative analysis of survey and administrative data to examine how group identity shapes perceptions and evaluations of the economy. Theories of economic voting traditionally focus on the role of macroeconomic indicators (e.g. GDP) and personal economic indicators (e.g. income) for how voters judge the government’s performance. Drawing on the rich empirical and theoretical literature on social identity theory, my research seeks to develop and examine a novel theory of economic voting that is based on perceptions of how salient social groups perform economically, rather than the individual or the economy as a whole. 

Besides this theoretical focus, my main academic interest is causal inference and advanced quantitative methods. I take a strong interest in new developments within quasi-experimental designs but also model-based causal inference with observational data. With regards to the latter, I work within the tradition of Judea Pearl with a focus on directed acyclic graphs, structural causal modelling and g-estimation. Of particular interest is causal mediation analysis, marginal structural models with inverse probability of treatment weighting and sequential g-estimation. In addition, I have an interest in causal inference for social networks and peer effects. 

My academic background is broadly social scientific with a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from University of Warwick and an MSc in Sociology from the University of Oxford. Throughout both degrees I've specialised in quantitative methods, applied philosophy and political sociology.

My PhD project is supervised by Frederik Hjorth (main supervisor) and Peter Thisted Dinesen (co-supervisor). 

Primary fields of research

  • Political behaviour and opinion formation
  • Social identity and group belonging
  • Political psychology and sociology
  • Quantitative methods
  • Quasi-experimental designs
  • Causal inference with observational data
  • Graphical causal models

Teaching

In the 2022 spring semester, I teach the compulsory Methods 3 course for 4th semester undergraduate Political Science students, which covers, among other things, causal inference and quasi-experimental designs. 

I have extensive experience with communicating research within my area. This includes a series of analyses of American politics for the Danish current affairs magazine, Ræson (on which I have also been an editor), several articles in large newspapers like Politiken and Information, and a chapter in the Danish textbook Global Development (Columbus, 2019). 

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