I am an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. I am currently co-director of the Hot Politics Lab and the Challenges to Democratic Representation Program Group. In my research I use psychological perspectives to analyze contemporary politics.
My work has appeared in journals such as the American Political Science Review, Nature Human Behaviour, Scientific Reports, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Analysis, European Journal of Political Research,Emotion and Political Psychology.
I am a co-founder and commentator on stukroodvlees.nl, a Dutch political science blog and the director of the Hot Politics Lab. My dissertation ‘”Modernize or Die?” Social Democrats, Welfare State Retrenchment and the Choice between Office and Policy” was awarded with the Jaarprijs Politicologie 2013, a prize for the best dissertation written by a Dutch or Flemish researcher abroad or a researcher at a Dutch or Belgian university. Recently I have been awarded with the KNAW Early Career Researcher Grant. I am also an alumnus of the University of Amsterdam, University of Hong Kong and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Click here for my CV and here for my Google Scholar page.
Academic appointments
| 2018- | Associate Professor, University of Amsterdam |
| 2015-2018 | Assistant Professor, University of Amsterdam |
| 2013-2015 | Assistant Professor, University of Southern Denmark |
| 2011-2013 | Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Southern Denmark |
| 2011-2017 | Affiliated Researcher, VU University Amsterdam |
| 2010 | Visiting Scholar, UNC Chapel Hill |
| 2008-2011 | PhD Candidate, VU University Amsterdam |
Education
| 2006-2008 | MSc Social Research, cum laude, VU University Amsterdam |
| 2004-2006 | MSc Political Science, cum laude, University of Amsterdam |
| 2001-2005 | Bachelor Sociology, University of Amsterdam |
Major Grants
| Period | Grant | Project title | Role | Budget |
| 2023-2026 | Marie Curie Doctoral Network | Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Adolescence and Democracy | Amsterdam Lead | ~€2.5 million |
| 2022-2024 | eScience Open Call | Multimodal Emotion Expression Capture Amsterdam | PI | |
| 2018-2023 | ERC Starting Grant | POLEMIC. Politics and Emotions Investigated Comparatively. | PI | ~€1.5 million |
| 2018-2020 | NWO Medium Investment Grant | The Mobile Lab: laboratory research moves into the field | Co-PI | ~€120.000 |
| 2017 | NWO Large National Research Grant | OnderbuikNL. Hoe beïnvloeden emoties je politieke voorkeur? | Co-PI | Primarily in-kind sponsoring |
| 2014-2018 | Horizon2020 | EUENGAGE | Package leader | ~€2.5 million |
| 2013-2016 | Sapere Aude Young Elite Researcher Grant | Do Party Leaders Respond to Public Opinion, the Party or Coalition Partners? | PI | ~€360.000 |
Publications
Pdf version 
Appendix 
Blog 
Replication Materials
| Nr. | Citation | Supplements |
|---|---|---|
| Christian Pipal, Bert N. Bakker, Gijs Schumacher & Mariken A. C. G. van der Velden (2024). Tone in politics is not systematically related to macro trends, ideology, or experience. Scientific Reports , 14. | ||
| Gijs Schumacher, Maaike D. Homan, Isabella Rebasso, Neil Fasching, Bert N. Bakker & Matthijs Rooduijn (2024). Establishing the validity and robustness of facial electromyography measures for political science. Politics and the Life Sciences , FirstView | ||
| Marc van de Wardt, Jean-Benoit Pilet, Gijs Schumacher & Arjen van Witteloostuijn. Contagion From Abroad. How Party Entry in Western Europe is Influenced by Party Family Members Abroad, 1961–2016 (2023). Comparative Political Studies, OnlineFirst | ||
| Maaike D. Homan, Gijs Schumacher & Bert Bakker (2023). Facing emotional politicians: Do emotional displays of politicians evoke mimicry and emotional contagion? Emotion , 23, 6. | ||
| Gijs Schumacher, Matthijs Rooduijn & Bert Bakker (2022). Hot Populism? Affective responses to antiestablishment Rhetoric. Political Psychology, 43, 5t. | ||
| Bert Bakker, Gijs Schumacher & Matthijs Rooduijn (2020). Hot Politics? Affective responses to political rhetoric. American Political Science Review. | Replication | |
| Gijs Schumacher & Patrik Ohberg (2020). How do politicians respond to opinion polls? An experiment with Swedish politicians. Research and Politics. | ||
| Bert Bakker, Gijs Schumacher & Matthijs Rooduijn (2020). The populist appeal. Personality and anti-establishment communication. The Journal of Politics. | Replication | |
| Bert Bakker, Gijs Schumacher & Maaike Homan (2020). Yikes. Are we disgusted by politicians? Politics and Life Sciences. | Replication | |
| Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik & Gijs Schumacher (2020). What parties want from their leaders: How office achievement trumps electoral performance as a driver of party leader survival. European Journal of Political Research | ||
| Bert Bakker, Gijs Schumacher, Claire Gothreau and Kevin Arceneaux (2020). Conservatives and liberals have similar physiological responses to threats. Nature Human Behaviour | Replication | |
| Denise Traber, Martijn Schoonvelde & Gijs Schumacher (2020). Errors have been made, others will be blamed. Issue engagement and blame shifting in Prime Minister speeches during the economic crisis in Europe. European Journal of Political Research | Replication | |
| Nathalie Giger & Gijs Schumacher (2019). Bringing party organization back in: a comparative analysis of party representation in Europe. Political Science Research and Methods. | ||
| Gijs Schumacher, Daniel Hansen, Mariken van der Velden & Sander Kunst (2019). A new dataset of Dutch and Danish party congress speeches. Research and Politics , 6, 2. | ||
| Martijn Schoonvelde, Gijs Schumacher and Bert Bakker (2019). Friends With Text as Data Benefits: Assessing and Extending the Use of Automated Text Analysis in Political Science and Political Psychology. Journal for Social and Political Psychology . | Replication | |
| Martijn Schoonvelde, Anna Brosius, Gijs Schumacher & Bert Bakker (2019). Liberals Lecture, Conservatives Communicate: analyzing complexity and ideology in 381,475 speeches. PLoS One , 14, 2, e0208450 | Replication | |
| Paul Marx & Gijs Schumacher (2018). Do poor citizens vote for redistribution, against immigration, or against the establishment? A conjoint experiment in Denmark. Scandinavian Political Studies , 41, 3, 263-282. | ||
| Gijs Schumacher & Ingo Zettler (2019). House of Cards or West Wing? Self-reported HEXACO Traits of Danish Politicians. Personality and Individual Differences , 141, 173–181. | ||
| Erik De Vries, Schoonvelde, M., & Schumacher, G. (2018). No Longer Lost in Translation: Evidence that Google Translate Works for Comparative Bag-of-Words Text Applications. Political Analysis, 26(4), 417-430. | Replication | |
| Gijs Schumacher & Christian Elmelund-Præstekær (2018). Party performance explains disagreement between politicians and their parties. West European Politics, 41, 2. | |
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| Roni Lehrer & Gijs Schumacher (2018). Governator vs. Hunter and Aggregator: A Simulation of Party Competition with Vote-Seeking and Office-Seeking Rules. PLOS ONE, 13(2): e0191649. | |
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| Gijs Schumacher & Nathalie Giger (2017). Do leadership-dominated parties change more? Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties. | |
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| Mariken van der Velden, Gijs Schumacher & Barbara Vis (2017). Living in the Past or Living in the Future? Analyzing Parties’ Platform Change In Between Elections, The Netherlands 1997–2014. Political Communication. | |
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| Jonathan Polk, Jan Rovny, Ryan Bakker, Erica Edwards, Liesbet Hooghe, Seth Jolly, Jelle Koedam, Filip Kostelka, Gary Marks, Gijs Schumacher, Marco Steenbergen, Milada Vachudova, Marko Zilovic (2017). Explaining the Salience of Anti-Elitism and Reducing Political Corruption for Political Parties in Europe with the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey Data. Research & Politics 4, 1. | |
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| Gijs Schumacher & Nathalie Giger (2017). Who Leads the Party? On Membership Size, Selectorates and Party Oligarchy. Political Studies, 65:(1_suppl). | |
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| Paul Marx & Gijs Schumacher (2016). The effect of economic change and elite framing on support for welfare state retrenchment: a survey experiment. Journal of European Social Policy 26, 1. | |
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| Gijs Schumacher & Kees van Kersbergen (2016). Do mainstream parties adapt to the welfare chauvinism of populist parties? Party Politics, 22, 3. | |
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| Bert Bakker, Matthijs Rooduijn, & Gijs Schumacher (2016). The Psychological Roots of Populist Voting: Evidence from the United States, the Netherlands and Germany. European Journal of Political Research, 55, 2. | |
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| Bert Bakker, Robert Klemmensen, Asbjørn Nørgaard & Gijs Schumacher (2016). Stay Loyal or Exit the Party? How Openness to Experience and Extraversion Explain Vote Switching. Political Psychology, 37, 3. | |
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| Gijs Schumacher, Marc van de Wardt, Barbara Vis & Michael Baggesen Klitgaard (2015). How Aspiration to Office Conditions the Impact of Government Participation on Party Platform Change. American Journal of Political Science, 59, 4. | |
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| Michael Baggesen Klitgaard, Gijs Schumacher & Menno Soentken (2015). The Partisan Politics of Institutional Welfare State Reforms. Journal of European Public Policy, 22, 7. | |
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| Christian Elmelund-Præstekær, Michael Baggesen Klitgaard & Gijs Schumacher (2015). What Wins Public Support? Communicating or Obfuscating Welfare State Retrenchment. European Political Science Review, 7, 3. | |
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| Gijs Schumacher (2015). When does the Left do the Right thing? A study of party position change on welfare policies. Party Politics, 21, 1. | |
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| Christian Elmelund-Præstekær & Gijs Schumacher (2014). Én for alle og alle for én? Mønstre i og effekter af partiintern uenighed blandt folketingskandidaterne ved 2011-valget. Politica, 46, 3. | |
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| Gijs Schumacher & Matthijs Rooduijn (2013). Sympathy for the 'Devil'? Voting for Populists in the 2006 and 2010 Dutch General Elections. Electoral Studies, 32, 1. | |
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| Gijs Schumacher, Catherine de Vries & Barbara Vis (2013). Why do Parties change Position? Party organization and environmental incentives. Journal of Politics, 75, 2. | |
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| Gijs Schumacher, Barbara Vis & Kees van Kersbergen (2013). Political Parties’ Welfare Image, Electoral Punishment, and Welfare State Retrenchment. Comparative European Politics, 11, 1. | |
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| Paul Marx & Gijs Schumacher (2013). Will to Power? Intra-Party Conflict in Social Democratic Parties and the Choice for Neoliberal Policies in Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, European Political Science Review, 5, 1 | |
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| Gijs Schumacher (2012). ‘Marx’ or the Market? Intra-party power and Social Democratic Welfare State Retrenchment, West European Politics, 35, 5. | |
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| Gijs Schumacher & Barbara Vis (2012). Why Do Social Democrats Retrench the Welfare State? A Simulation. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 15, 3. | |
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| Gijs Schumacher (2011). Signaling a Change of Heart. How Parties Short-Term Ideological Shifts Explain Welfare State Reform. Acta Politica, 46, 4. | |
Chapters / Data / Other
Pdf version Appendix Blog Replication Materials
| Nr. | Citation | Supplements |
|---|---|---|
| Bert Bakker, Matthijs Rooduijn, & Gijs Schumacher (2017). Response to Schimpf and Schoen’s Response to Bakker, Rooduijn and Schumacher (2016). Open Science Framework. November 24. osf.io/5u8t6. | |
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| Bert Bakker, Matthijs Rooduijn, and Gijs Schumacher (2016). “The Populist Personality.” In The Science of Trump. Explaining the Rise of an Unlikely Candidate, eds. John Sides and Henry Farrell. The Monkey Cage. | |
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| Gijs Schumacher, Martijn Schoonvelde, Denise Traber, Tanushree Dahiya, and Erik de Vries (2016). EUSpeech: A New Dataset of EU Elite Speeches. In Proceedings of the International Conference on the Advances in Computational Analysis of Political Text (PolText 2016), Dubrovnik, 75–80. | |
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| Gijs Schumacher, Martijn Schoonvelde, Tanushree Dahiya, and Erik de Vries. (2016). EUSpeech. A Dataset of EU Elite Speeches 2007-2015. Version 2.0. | |
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| Greene, Zac, Andrea Ceron, Gijs Schumacher, and Zoltan Fazekas (2016). The Nuts and Bolts of Automated Text Analysis. Comparing Different Document Pre-Processing Techniques in Four Countries. Open Science Framework. | |
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| Bert Bakker, Matthijs Rooduijn, & Gijs Schumacher (2016). The Psychological Roots of Populist Voting: Evidence from the United States, the Netherlands and Germany. European Journal of Political Research, 55, 2. | |
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| Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik, & Gijs Schumacher (2015). Why Some Leaders Die Hard (and Others Don’t): Party Goals, Party Institutions, and How They Interact. In W. Cross & J. B. Pilet (Eds.), The Politics of Party Leadership: A Cross-National Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. | |
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| Helene Helboe Pedersen, & Schumacher, G. (2015). Do Leadership Changes Improve Electoral Performance? In W. Cross & J. B. Pilet (Eds.), The Politics of Party Leadership: A Cross-National Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. | |
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| Ryan Bakker, Erica Edwards, Liesbet Hooghe, Seth Jolly, Jelle Koedam, Filip Kostelka, Gary Marks, Jonathan Polk, Jan Rovny, Gijs Schumacher, Marco Steenbergen, Milada Vachudova, and Marko Zilovic. 2015. 1999-2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey Trend File. Version 1.1. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. | |
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| Nathalie Giger & Gijs Schumacher (2015). Integrated Party Organization Dataset (IPOD). Harvard Dataverse, 10.7910/DVN/PE8TWP. | |
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| Philip Manow, Kees van Kersbergen & Gijs Schumacher (2013). De-industrialization and the Expansion of the Welfare State: A Reassessment. In: A. Wren, Political Economy of the Service Sector . Oxford: Oxford University Press. | |
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| Gijs Schumacher (2011). “Modernize or Die”? Social Democrats, Welfare State Retrenchment and the Choice between Office and Policy. VU University Amsterdam Dissertation. | |