Biographical Sketch

Nela Mrchkovska is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute of Public Management & Governance at WU Vienna University of Economics and Business. She earned a Ph.D. in Political Science in 2023 and a Master’s Degree in Political Science in 2022, both from the University of Washington -- Seattle. She also holds a Master’s Degree in International Studies from the University of Oklahoma, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Finance and Risk Management from the University of Central Oklahoma.

Her primary research interests lie at the intersection of culture and political economy. Specifically, she explore how religious institutions and actors interact with politics to shape attitudes, public opinion, and policy at both the individual and institutional levels across various societies and time periods. In her work, she utilizes survey data and experimental designs to assess individual behavior and attitudes toward public policies such as climate change and public spending, while considering individuals’ ideological convictions, cultural predispositions, and biases. She also employs data scraping and text analysis methods to investigate the engagement of public institutions and actors with contemporary sociopolitical issues. Lastly, she also uses historical data and employs quasi-experimental observational methods to study national policies and their impact on cultural and political behavior.