Lea Dornacher
PhD Candidate
Lea is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the CEE since September 2023. She graduated from the École des Affaires Publiques at Sciences Po in 2023 with a Master in Public Policy (Economics and Public Policy). Previously, she obtained a Bachelor in Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science, graduating in 2021.
1. Research
In her Master’s Thesis, Lea studied how neoclassical economic models shape individual preferences of policy makers, using the policy domain of minimum wages in the United Kingdom as a case and an experimental survey research design.
Her PhD work discusses the relationship between features and forms of economic models as socially created ideas and their persuasive power in the policy process. It specifically considers epistemic and cognitive authority and explores their connection to methodological choices of formal economic modelling. In this regard, important areas of inquiry are the lasting influence of neoclassical economics and the systematic policy implications of how ideas are interpreted.
This thesis is supervised by Colin Hay.
Research Topics
Political Economy, Epistemology of Social Sciences, Neoliberalism, Mixed Methods Research
