Education and Work Experience

Karoline R. Estermann is a doctoral researcher at Berlin Graduate School for Global and Transregional Studies (BGTS) and part of the Junior Research Group "Comparative Survey". She graduated from Bonn University with her Master’s degree in Sociology in 2023. As part of her studies, she did quantitative research on public opinions towards Search and Rescue Organizations in the Mediterranean, and qualitative research on discursive criminalization of trafficked women in forced prostitution. Besides her studies, she worked as a research assistant at the Chair of Sociology/Empirical Research Methods at the Institute for Political Sciences and Sociology. She previously worked as an editor since she holds a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism. 

Her doctoral research project is about analyzing data from the survey Public Attitudes towards the Liberal Script (PALS). She aims to understand the composition and contradictory of liberal ways of thinking, and to map the prevalence of liberal mindsets in different regions of the world. 

Grants

• Funding from Berlin University Alliance for an X-Student Research Group: Backlash Against Gender. Comparative Perspectives on Europe’s Anti-Gender Politics.

• Erasmus+ grant for a teaching stay at the University of Ghana: Lecture on “Introduction to Quantitative Data Analysis in Political Science and Sociology”

Research Interests

• Political Sociology
• Sociology of Law 
• Norms and belief systems 
• Migration
• Social Inequality

Public Outreach

• As a part of the Junior Research Group “Comparative Survey” led by Heiko Giebler, Karoline Estermann played a key role in developing the PALS Data Navigator, making the global survey “Public Attitudes towards the Liberal Script (PALS)” accessible to the public.

• She presented her findings of survey data from ~ 50.000 respondents at Berlin Science Week 2025: The Illusion of a Divided Society. The Role of the Public during the Democratic Crisis.

Journal Articles

• Schmidt, M., & Estermann, K. R. (2026). The Impact of Face Mask Usage on Data Quality in Face-to-face Interviews. Field Methods, 38(1), 19-32.

Others

• Giebler, Heiko & Estermann, Karoline (2025). It’s Not Immigration, Stupid! Zuwanderung treibt Menschen weniger um, als öffentliche Debatten vermuten lassen. WZB Mitteilungsheft 2|25. Juni 2025. 52-55.