Rune Slothuus studies how ordinary people understand politics and how they form opinions about what policies and politicians they prefer. In particular, Slothuus is interested in how the political environment, most notably the political parties, influence citizens’ reasoning about politics.
His current project, funded by a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC), investigates how citizens use political parties as signposts to make sense of complex policy issues like climate change, immigration, inequality and social welfare.
Slothuus’ research has received multiple awards and been published in journals including American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science and The Journal of Politics.
Rune Slothuus supervises master’s theses and PhD projects broadly in the fields of political behavior, political psychology and political communication. Methodologically, he is specialized in experimental designs and survey research.
Rune Slothuus teaches different courses on how democratic political systems work as well as on research design. Most recently, he taught the seminar “Can We Leave Democracy to the Voters? Public Opinion Formation and Citizens’ Democratic Competence.”