The people behind ParlLawSpeech.

PLS is a collaboration across the University of Cologne, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, GESIS, the poltextLAB AI laboratory, and partner institutions — produced as Work Package 5 of the OPTED project.

Core researchers

Lukas Hetzer

Lukas Hetzer

Research Associate at the Jacques Delors Centre, Hertie School; PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Cologne.

Studies European politics, political communication, public opinion, and crisis governance. Combines computational text analysis, survey experiments, and other quantitative methods.

EU politics · Quantitative text analysis · Data linking
Sven-Oliver Proksch

Sven-Oliver Proksch

Professor of Political Science and Chair for European and Multilevel Politics, Department of Political Science, University of Cologne.

Specialises in political representation, democratic institutions, party politics, and parliamentary debates. His book The Politics of Parliamentary Debate won the 2016 Richard Fenno award.

Parliamentary debates · Quantitative text analysis · European politics
Christian Rauh

Christian Rauh

Senior Researcher, WZB Berlin Social Science Center; Professor for Politics of Multilevel Governance, University of Potsdam.

Focuses on decision-making processes of European and international institutions, and their politicisation in public debates.

EU politics · International institutions · Politicisation
Jan Schwalbach

Jan Schwalbach

Data Services for the Social Sciences Department, GESIS.

Co-creator of the ParlSpeech dataset of parliamentary speeches from nine countries over up to thirty years.

Legislative politics · Quantitative text analysis · Party behaviour

Additional contributors

Gergő Balázs · Alexander Dahlheimer · Ágnes Dinnyés · Péter Gelányi · Sandra Hiersemann · Rebeka Kiss · Eszter Lancsár · Asbjørn Lindholm · Flynn Schirott · Anna Székely · Anna Takács · Péter Visnovitz