About

Collegio Carlo Alberto
University of Mannheim

daniel.auer[at]carloalberto.org

Hello! I am a researcher interested in how social change and the diversification of societies shape public perceptions and policies, which, in turn, affect individual lives and collective outcomes. I use natural and field experiments, large-scale administrative data collected in challenging contexts, and qualitative accounts to investigate how institutions and public opinion shape inequality and democracy. Much of my research focuses on minority integration and the social, political, and economic causes and consequences of mobility. My work is published in leading journals across sociology, political science, and economics, contributing to both scholarly debates and policy discussions. In teaching, I place strong emphasis on connecting theory, methods, and empirical research to cultivate critical thinking about today’s most pressing societal challenges.

In 2025, I was awarded the Raymond Boudon Award for Early Career Achievement.

I am currently Assistant Professor at the Collegio Carlo Alberto in Torino, fellow at the University of Mannheim’s Center for European Social Research (MZES), and lecturer at the University of Basel (WWZ).

In the academic year 2025/26, I am also serving as Chair of Quantitative Empirical Research at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich (LMU).

I am also Associate Editor at the Journal of Population Research.

Prior to joining CCA and MZES, I studied in Vienna, Urbana-Champaign, and Zurich before receiving my Ph.D. from the University of Lausanne and the Swiss National Science Foundation. I have also been a postdoctoral researcher at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and the University of Bern, and visiting researcher in Malmoe and Oxford.

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