Jonathan Ulrich

My department at Leuphana University offers 6 fully funded PhD scholarships (incl. research funding) for three years.

If you are interested in studying democratic resilience (particularly party competition and elections 🤓) and you have a strong methodolgical background: Apply!

shorturl.at/kcTbG

Cover of Cambridge Elements "Gender and Politics, Attitudes toward Political Authoritarianism in Economically Advanced Democracies" by Amy C. Alexander and Gëfjon Off. The background features a vibrant pink and orange texture.

New Cambridge Element 'Attitudes toward Political Authoritarianism in Economically Advanced Democracies' by Amy C. Alexander & @gefjonoff.bsky.social is free access until the 16th of July, 2025 -

cup.org/4eF9Z8U

#cambridgeelements #politics

Expressing intentions is not climate action letter published in PNAS: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2512457122

In our now published letter in @pnas.org, we raise two wider issues for behavioral science:

1) Intentions are poor predictors of behavior
2) Effects on intentions need not generalize to effects on behavior

We join calls for researchers to measure actual behavior: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Attitudes toward Political Authoritarianism in Economically Advanced Democracies Cambridge Core - Politics: General Interest - Attitudes toward Political Authoritarianism in Economically Advanced Democracies

Our Element is out! 🎉

Why do authoritarian-leaning leaders target women’s and LGBTQ+ rights? Is there a systematic pattern that reaches beyond individual country cases, and how is this reflected in people’s attitudes and societal norms?

www.cambridge.org/core/element...

🪧New preprint out:

"Politicians underestimate support for climate action even more than the general public"

osf.io/preprints/os...

Pluralistic ignorance - citizens underestimating others' climate concerns - is well documented.

But what about policymakers in office?🏛️🤔

A short thread 🧵

Map from the Climate Shift Index of Europe, showing that the current heat wave over much of Western Europe is 4-5 times more likely due to climate change.

A lot of media are covering Europe’s heatwave 🔥 but few are connecting it to the climate crisis.

Tools like the Climate Shift Index show this heatwave is up to 5x 😱 more likely because of climate change. That context matters.

csi.climatecentral.org/climate-shif...

absolutely sweltering conditions here in Europe.

remember, despite the sunny headlines, and pics of people on beaches:

🔥 heatwaves are deadly
👶 they hit the most vulnerable hardest
🌡️ heat plus humidity drives the impact
🏠 infrastructure can't cope
🌍 climate change is making every heatwave worse

Extreme weather event attribution predicts climate policy support across the world - Nature Climate Change Literature produced inconsistent findings regarding the links between extreme weather events and climate policy support across regions, populations and events. This global study offers a holistic asse...

🚨 How do exposure to extreme weather events and the subjective attribution of these events to climate change relate to climate policy support across the world? 🔥🌎

Find out more in our OA article published in Nature Climate Change 👇 1/7 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/7 🧵 We live in a biased social reality! 🤯

🚨 NEW PAPER: Climate activist stereotypes among the German public and German climate activists.

My 1st PhD paper 🤩 in collaboration with @umweltbundesamt.bsky.social

I have an open position for a doctoral/postdoctoral researcher in my group @unileipzig.bsky.social (fully funded, 3 years, starting 10/2025). Research shall be on quantitative economic analyses of water management and/or climate adaptation. Deadline: 31 May 2025. Feel free DM me for questions.

📢 In our recently published paper in Nature #Climate Change, we show that, when we consider the entire #annual cycle, the protective effects of the #urban #heat island during the coldest periods exceed (by over 4 times) the adverse effects during the warmest periods for most non-tropical #cities.

Do answers to these questions differ between Barcelona, which faced heat risks for a long time, and Hamburg, which is still famous for its windy and rainy weather?

Very much looking forward to further discuss and write up our insights. Stay tuned for more soon!

Picuture of organization name at the entrance of the building of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center

Picture of the supercomputer at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center

I spent last week at the Knowledge Integration team of Barcelona Supercomputing Center to discuss insights from interviews with heat adaptation stakeholders in Hamburg and Barcelona: What heat adaptation actions do they implement? With whom do they collaborate? How do they use climate information?

Whenever I post about climate, skeptical folks inevitable respond with this graph. So I decided to do something radical: actually read the underling scientific paper and ask the authors.

As it turns out, it actually says the opposite of what skeptics claim: www.theclimatebrink....

Thinking Through Waste, Fraud and Corruption in US Foreign Assistance The US Administration has presented a weak case for its argument that US foreign assistance was so riddled with abuse and fraud that the only answer was to shut down USAID and reboot. The lists of ter...

Blog: Thinking Through Waste, Fraud and Corruption in US Foreign Assistance.

▪️No evidence of widespread fraud or corruption
▪️Inefficiencies mainly driven by domestic politics
▪️Some programs do fail to deliver hoped for outcomes but most are awesomely successful.

www.cgdev.org/blog/thinkin...

A group of people standing next to a poster

Last week I discussed with municipal officers and scientists at the #I4CAdaptalab how climate science could better support climate change adaptation. I still have to reflect on what I learned but the biggest obstacle to adaptation seem to be political and require more than just climate information

"In den 50er, 60er Jahren waren Frauen eher konservativer als Männer" - die Politikwissenschaftlerin Gefjon Off Seit Jahren beobachten wir ein Auseinanderdriften der Wählerschaften. Das zeigt sich in vielen Ländern auch in einem wachsenden Gender Ideology Gap, einer größer werdenden Kluft zwischen den politisch...

Gestern gab's eine kleine Übersicht der westeuropäischen Forschung zu Geschlechterunterschieden in politischer Weltanschauung und Wahlverhalten, historischen Entwicklungen und aktuellen Trends, Fragestellungen und Hypothesen mit mir im Hessischen Rundfunk:

www.hr2.de/podcasts/in-...

Studies consistently show that Americans underestimate support for a wide range of pro-climate policies--an important intervention point. But another layer to this is that they also *over*estimate support for pro-fossil fuel policies.

Check out the figure below for 18 diff policies we asked about:

Is climate science threatened as US slashes jobs, funding? – DW – 03/07/2025 Since reentering the White House, US president Donald Trump has made sweeping cuts to key scientific institutions. What could it mean for the rest of the world and efforts to combat climate change?

"But Labe says his personal loss pales in comparison to the implications not only to climate science around the world but the everyday lives of people in the US."

Today, I had the opportunity to present my research about antifeminism among young men to Members of the European Parliament, activists, journalists, lawyers, victims of gender-based violence and other people fighting for women's and LGBTQI+ rights every day.

🌡 New on @ourworldindata.org:

We added global temperature anomaly charts *coloured by El Nino / La Nina periods*.

Today's "cool" years are warmer than "warm" years of the past.

[New article and charts by my colleague Veronika Samborska and I: ourworldindata.org/global-tempe... ]

Brilliant! Really cool way to show how El Nino / la Nina drive temperature variability and that the ups and downs are not random

Authoritarianism and conservative gender attitudes go hand in hand.🤝

Amy Alexander and I wrote a Cambridge Element on exactly this relationship and, as of today, it is officially accepted for publication! Will share more soon :)

With the world's focus on crumbling geopolitics, (in)security, extremism and evil wars, it is understandable that climate change has fallen down the agenda.

But to be clear: we cannot adapt our way out of all the impacts so we still need to everything possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

#BTW25
My take on the #GermanElection: Social justice wins votes! Especially among youth, and young urban women in particular.

Even though this campaign barely addressed social justice and was dominated by debates on immigration, domestic & international security, and economic growth, ...

I see a lot of desperation about German election. #BTW25

Let me provide a perspective from Trumpland:

AfD will win at most 25%, which means that 75% do NOT vote for far right! That is still a strong democratic mandate. Use it to strengthen democracy! Don't empower the far right unnecessarily!

(S+) Männlichkeit: Die Sehnsucht junger Männer nach alten Rollenbildern Junge Männer wählen immer rechter, fühlen sich benachteiligt oder vergessen – und sehnen alte Rollenbilder herbei. Was ist mit ihnen los?

For this week's @spiegel.de edition, I talked to Tanya Falenczyk on young men's attitudes towards feminism and gender equality. Really happy to see this out, also in print!

www.spiegel.de/start/maennl...

Is there a gender youth gap in far-right voting and cultural attitudes across EU countries? 🚻🇪🇺

With Amy Alexander and Nicholas Charron, we have a new Gender Update out in @ejpgjournal.bsky.social. We find much cross-country variation, but... 🧵

bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journal...

With so much negative news about #ClimateChange these days, this is what gives me hope ☀️

🧵 Given how much confusion there was in response to this post, I guess a brief overview of key concepts is needed. I prefer to start with the Pressure and Release (PAR) Model, first published in Blaikie et al's 1994 book At Risk (the 2nd ed. from 2005 is here: www.preventionweb.net/files/670_72...)