Sebastian Levi is a political scientist investigating climate change politics and public attitudes, frequently with the help of quantitative and computational methods. He has received a doctorate from the Berlin Graduate School of Transnational Studies, an MPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Political Science from Freie Universität Berlin. Prior to his position at the Hertie School, he was a Visiting Assistant in Research at Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC) and a visiting researcher at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC).
Sebastian Levi is particularly interested in analysing how political developments shape public preferences on climate policy. In his doctoral thesis, he has examined how social and political circumstances influence individual belief in human-made climate change across different countries. At the Hertie School, he contributes to ARIADNE, a BMBF-funded research project that seeks to generate scientific advice on how to improve Germany’s political response to the global climate crisis. Here, he examines the formation of public attitudes to different climate policies and the capacity of political institutions to deliver emission neutrality.