The people behind ParlLawSpeech.

PLS is a collaboration across the University of Cologne, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, GESIS, the poltextLAB AI laboratory at the ELTE Centre for Social Sciences, and partner institutions — produced as Work Package 5 of the OPTED project.

Core researchers

Lukas Hetzer

Lukas Hetzer

Cologne Center for Comparative Politics, University of Cologne. Previously Data Specialist at GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences.

Combines observational text and survey data to study political preferences and behaviour in the EU. M.Sc. Social Sciences Research (University of Amsterdam); B.A. Social Sciences (Humboldt-University Berlin).

Political behaviour · Quantitative text analysis · Data linking
Sven-Oliver Proksch

Sven-Oliver Proksch

Professor of Political Science and Chair for European and Multilevel Politics, Cologne Center for Comparative Politics.

Specialises in political representation, democratic institutions, party politics, and parliamentary debates. His book The Politics of Parliamentary Debate won the 2016 Richard Fenno award.

Parliamentary debates · Quantitative text analysis · European politics
Christian Rauh

Christian Rauh

Senior Researcher, WZB Berlin Social Science Center; Professor for Politics of Multilevel Governance, University of Potsdam.

Focuses on decision-making processes of European and international institutions, and their politicisation in public debates.

EU politics · International institutions · Politicisation
Jan Schwalbach

Jan Schwalbach

Data Services for the Social Sciences Department, GESIS.

Co-creator of the ParlSpeech dataset of parliamentary speeches from nine countries over up to thirty years.

Legislative politics · Quantitative text analysis · Party behaviour
Miklós Sebők

Miklós Sebők

Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Political Science, Centre for Social Sciences, Budapest; Principal Investigator at the poltextLAB AI laboratory.

Co-editor of Policy Agendas in Democracy, Autocracy and Hybrid Regimes (Palgrave, 2021). Research spans legislative studies, political economy, text mining, and machine learning.

Legislative studies · Political economy · Text mining · ML

Additional contributors

Gergő Balázs · Alexander Dahlheimer · Ágnes Dinnyés · Péter Gelányi · Sandra Hiersemann · Rebeka Kiss · Eszter Lancsár · Asbjørn Lindholm · Flynn Schirott · Anna Székely · Anna Takács · Péter Visnovitz