Laura Jacobs is postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Political Communication and Journalism of the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR). She is working on the VIDI project by Dr. Joost van Spanje ‘Defending or Damaging Democracy’ which focuses on the effects of legal action against anti-immigrant parties.
Previously Laura worked at the Centre for Political Research of the University of Leuven, where she also obtained her PhD in the Social Sciences in June 2017. Her PhD thesis examined the role of immigration news as a contextual-level antecedent for prejudice and intergroup conflict.
In parallel to her PhD, Laura was a collaborator of the Steunpunt Media, a cooperation between Flemish Universities responsible for policy advice to the Flemish government in the field of media. In 2017, Laura worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Belgian team responsible for the fieldwork of the European Social Survey (ESS) at the Centre for Sociological Research of the University of Leuven.
Laura obtained a Bachelor in Political Science at the University of Antwerp (2010), and a Master in International Relations at the University of Ghent (2011). Her research interests include anti-immigrant parties, populism, media effects and intergroup relations. She is also interested in conducting experiments and media content analysis.