I am a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. As part of the ERC project CRITICALTRUST, my PhD research focuses on citizens’ attitudes towards political institutions, with a particular emphasis on long-term trends in political trust. Rather than only studying whether political trust is rising or falling, I want to understand when trust is meaningfully connected to democratic performance – and when it becomes disconnected. In addition, I co-lead the DEVIANT project, which investigates how citizens’ democratic beliefs shape their responses to violations of democratic norms by political leaders. Theoretically, I draw on approaches from both Comparative Politics and Political Psychology. Empirically, I work mainly with large-scale cross-national survey data, longitudinal panel studies, and experimental methods.