Thursday Seminars by Rebekka Kesberg

Foes or Fellow Citizens? Perception of Democratic Legitimacy and Political Polarization

Bio

Rebekka Kesberg is a senior researcher at the University of Sussex (United Kingdom) and the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands). She completed her PhD in social psychology at Ulm University (Germany), where she studied how human values shape perception, attitudes, and behavior. 

Following her PhD, she worked on the international and interdisciplinary UNDPOLAR project, which investigated political polarization in European democracies. She is currently the principal investigator of Valuing Democracy: The Role of Democracy as a Superordinate Identity in the Justification of Political Violence, funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council. This project examines how citizens in the UK perceive democracy and the extent to which identifying as a democrat influences their attitudes and behaviors, particularly in relation to the justification of political violence. The project also tests interventions aimed at strengthening democratic support across political divides. 

Rebekka is also a researcher in the Horizon Europe-funded project PushBackLash, which explores anti-gender backlash and democratic pushback. Her research within the project focuses on anti-gender movements and the narratives they disseminate on social media to create perceptions of threat, mobilize support and undermine democratic governance. 

Her work combines insights from psychology and political science to better understand how social dynamics shape democratic life and political conflict. She aims to inform both academic debates and public understanding on how to build and maintain resilient democracies.