Projects

To Draw a Line: National Identities and their Political Consequences. (Dissertation)

Despite increased globalisation and growing international migration, nation states, nationalism, and national identification continue to play a crucial role. Particuarly, nationalist positions have recently regained ground dramatically in national politics. The recent resurgence and the successes of far-right parties emphasising national exclusivity (Mudde 2007; Halikiopoulou et al. 2013; Halikiopoulou and Vlandas 2019) demonstrate the continuing relevance of national identity for individuals. This relevance of the nation to the individual, and particularly the political consequences of this relevance, is the focus of my dissertation.

How individuals draw the line between compatriots and outsiders thereby plays a crucial role in explaining far-right attitudes and voting. I have identified meaningful types of national boundary-making across countries, time, different survey instruments, and empirical studies, with those individuals with narrow conceptions of their national in-group being significantly more likely to choose a far-right party. This relationship is particularly strong in times when public debate focuses on national or immigration-related issues. Specifically, national identities are activated by the accommodation of extreme right-wing immigration positions by political elites of all parties, as well as by the presence of immigration-related issues in the mass media, which is of particular benefit to extreme right-wing parties, not only in general, but also specifically by activating those with narrow conceptions.

finished

Output:
Articles

May, Antonia C. (2025). May, Antonia C. (2025). Ready or not. National Identity, Vote Choice, and Mass Media: Evidence from Germany. Political Psychology, 00, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.70005.
May, Antonia C., & Christian S. Czymara (2024). Careless whisper: Political elite discourses activate national identities for far-right voting preferences. Nations and Nationalism, 30(1), 90–109. https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12985.
May, Antonia C. (2023). And if they don’t dance, they are no friends of mine: Exploring boundaries of national identity. Nations and Nationalism, 29(2), 579–597. https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12926.

Blogposts

Media

Featured in book: “Rechtsextremismus bekämpfen: Was sagt die Wissenschaft?”, Katapult.
“Imiter l’extrême droite pour lui prendre des voix, un très mauvais calcul electoral” Alternatives Economiques
“Adopting far-right rhetoric increases far-right votes” Social Europe
„Studie: Ausgrenzungsrhetorik etablierter Parteien stärkt Rückhalt für rechtsextreme Parteien“ berlin.de

Invited Talks

“Zwischen Zugehörigkeit und Abgrenzung: Nationale Identitäten, öffentliche Debatten und Wahlentscheidungen”, invited to Ringvorlesung “Von Nationen und Narrativen - Identitäten in multiethnischen Gesellschaften” des Fachschaftsrats Politikwissenschaften, Universität Mainz, SoSe2025, 17-06-2025.
“Nationalisten auf dem Vormarsch: Wie Politik, Medien und unser Selbstbild sie stärken”, Shortlist Sozialwissenschaften Deutscher Studienpreis 2025, Körberstiftung, 23-06-2025.

PoMigDem - Democratic Values Among Migrants from Authoritarian Regimes (Teilprojekt)

The project investigates how migrants’ democratic values differ from those of non-migrants and how these differences can be explained by socialisation processes in countries of origin and destination. The project aims to use more specific indicators to better understand how people perceive ‘democracy’ and to investigate whether migrants from authoritarian regimes adapt their values after migrating to democratic countries or whether it is mainly people with already strong democratic values who tend to migrate. Another aspect is how important people find democratic norms compared to other political goals, which will be tested in trade-off experiments to determine the willingness to compromise on democratic values. Finally, the influence of social norms on migrants’ democratic attitudes will be investigated, in particular through list experiments designed to uncover the role of social desirability. The results will show the extent to which democratic regimes act as incentives to migrate, the influence of political socialisation in non-democratic regimes on support for democratic values and how education and integration measures can promote democratic values. Lead: Prof. Dr. Marc Helbling,Dr. Sandra Morgenstern, Dr. Korinna Lindemann Tean: Antonia May (Project Member) Runtime: 2025-01-01 - 2025-12-31 (ongoing) Funding: BMFSFJ

More Info: MZES Web

NexCiCo - A Next-Generation Randomised Citizen Council for Encouraging Political Participation at the Local Level

NexCiCo examines the impact of citizen councils on political attitudes.

Lead: Dr. Sebastian Ziaja
Team: Antonia May (Project Member)
Runtime: 2024-05-01 – 2025-04-30 (finished)
Funding: VolkswagenStiftung

More Info: GESIS Web

The ‘LORDpilot’ project evaluates the practicability of a Concept Registry for the social and economic sciences, develops a basic data model for the Concept Registry and a user-friendly application. To this end, exemplary for a selection of overlapping content of important data collections in the disciplines (ALLBUS, SOEP, Nacaps) concepts are identified, questions and variables are linked to the concepts, and relationships across the concepts between the data collections are established. Theoretical concepts are identified through intellectual analysis and comparison, as well as research on measurement tools and dataset-related publications.

Lead: Dr. Andreas Daniel (DZHW), Dr. Jan Goebel (DIW), Dr. Dagmar Kern (GESIS), Dr. Pascal Siegers (GESIS)
Team: Daniel Klein (DZHW), Antonia May, Fakhri Momeni (GESIS), Jana Nebelin (DIW), Claudia Saalbach (DIW), Knut Wenzig (DIW), Dr. Benjamin Zapilko (GESIS)
Role: Project Member
Runtime: 2022-06-01 – 2023-09-30 (finished)
Funding: DFG - Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

More Info: DIW Web

HaSpaD - Harmonizing and synthesizing partnership histories from different research data infrastructures: A model project for linking research data from various infrastructure

This research project harmonises and cumulates survey-based, longitudinal data compiled from relationship biographies. By pooling these data sources, the project pursues two primary goals: First, utilising and improving contemporary research methods for data synthesis, this research project aimed to further increase the importance and visibility of evidence-based social science research. Second, the pooled data set allows to investigate previously unanswered questions regarding relationship stability from a historical and life-course perspective, for example concerning the reasons for the increase of divorce rates over the last decades and whether risk factors for separation have changed.

Lead: Dr. Sonja Schulz (GESIS), Dr. Bernd Weiss (GESIS)
Team: Anna-Carolina Haensch (GESIS), Sebastian Sterl (GESIS), Lisa Schmid (GESIS), Antonia May
Role: Project Member (2020-07-01 - 2022-05-31)
Runtime: 2017-10-01 - 2022-05-31 (finished)
Funding: DFG - Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

More Info: GESIS Web Harmonisation Files: GESIS Search

ONBound - Old and new boundaries: National Identities and Religion

In times of globalization on the one hand, and growing divergence also within society e.g. in terms of wealth and life chances on the other hand, national and religious identities seem to re-gain salience as markers for exclusion, or inclusion, for a differentiation between “us” and “them”. The ONBound project seeks to increase the understanding of how national and religious identities are intertwined, or exclude each other, in the modern world. On this purpose, we browsed a vast array of existing individual level and contextual data and built a database that offers the opportunity for scientific research to explore these issues. Beyond individual-level survey data the database contains relevant country-level indicators for research questions on one or both topics.Due to copyright restrictions, researchers need to download the original datasets from the original sources. Thereupon, ONBound provides a set of customized syntax files for cumulation and harmonization of the data.

Lead: Dr. Insa Bechert (GESIS), Dr. Markus Quandt (GESIS), Prof. Dr. Annette Schnabel (Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf)
Team: Katharina Werhan (GESIS), Antonia May (GESIS), Kathrin Behrens (Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf), Dr. Brigitte Mathiak (GESIS, Harmonization Wizard), Matthäus Zloch (GESIS, Harmonization Wizard)
Collaborators: Prof. Dr. Ferruccio Biolcati-Rinaldi and Dr. Cristiano Vezzoni (both University of Milan, Italy), Prof. Dr. Mikael Hjerm (University of Umea, Sweden)
Role: Project Member (2017-07-17 - 2021-06-30)
Runtime: 2017-10-01 - 2022-05-31 (finished)
Funding: DFG - Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft