Team
Katharina T. Paul, Principal Investigator
Katharina Paul is Associate Professor at the University of Vienna (Department of Political Science and Research Platform Governance of Digital Practices). She obtained her PhD in Social and Political Sciences at the University of Amsterdam in 2009 and joined Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2010 as Assistant Professor of comparative health policy. In March 2013, Katharina Paul joined the University of Vienna. In June 2021, she was awarded a START Prize by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) for her project Valuing Vaccination (VALUE-VACC).
Research interests: Critical policy studies, health policy, vaccination, global health, digital health governance
Nora Hansl, BA MA
Nora Hansl is a PhD candidate and researcher at the FWF START project “Valuing Vaccination: a multi-sited policy-valuography” (PI: Katharina T. Paul) since December 2022. Her research focuses on valuation practices concerning childhood vaccination and primary care.
She studied Political Science at the University of Vienna, specialising in Policy- and Governance Analysis, International Political Economy and Qualitative Methods. Her collaborative Master’s thesis (Supervision: Barbara Prainsack) investigated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students and the university through a qualitative interview series with students at the University of Vienna.
During her Master’s studies, she worked as student assistant for Dr. Josef Melchior and was responsible for administrative and organizational tasks concerning the SPL and university lecturers. Additionally, she was empolyed as tutor for digital and hybrid teaching as well as qualitative methods at the Department of Political Science.
Research interests: Health Policy, Vaccination Policy, Interpretative Policy Research, Critical Policy Studies, Qualitative Methods, Political Ethnography
Dmitrii M. Zhikharevich, PhD
Dr. Dmitrii M. Zhikharevich studied economic sociology and social theory at St Petersburg State University and London School of Economics. His PhD thesis, supervised by Peter Miller and Martin Giraudeau, examined the emergence and early history of venture capitalism in the U.S. In 2020-2022, Dmitrii worked as a Research Fellow at the STS Center, European University at St Petersburg.
Since February 2023, Dmitrii is a researcher in the FWF Start Project “Valuing Vaccination: A multi-sited policy valuography” (principal investigator: Katharina T. Paul). Dmitrii’s empirical work examines how pharmaceutical companies attribute value to their products, thus turning vaccines into capital. In a longer-term, historical perspective, he also works on the genealogy of ‘immunization economics.’
Research interests: Valuation studies, social theory, economic sociology, history and sociology of expertise, STS
dmitrii.zhikharevich@univie.ac.at
Christina M. Walcherberger, BA
Christina Walcherberger studies political science at the University of Vienna and climate change and societal transformation at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) Vienna. In her studies she is focusing on quantitative methods, gender issues, questions of ecology, and Austrian politics.
Christina has previously worked at the Austrian Corona Panel Project (ACPP), focusing her Bachelor’s thesis (University of Vienna, 2023) on the gendered impacts of Covid-19 on earned income, as well as at the Department of Government at the University of Vienna, concentrating on policy- and governance analysis and exploring quantitative research methods.
Research interests: Feminism, intersectionality, ecology and climate change, right-wing populism, quantitative methods
christina.walcherberger@univie.ac.at
Former Members
Dr. Anna Pichelstorfer, Bakk. MA
Anna Pichelstorfer studied sociology and science and technology studies at the University of Vienna. She was a scholar at the Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna (2011-2013) and a visiting researcher at the Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen (2016). Her PhD Thesis (supervisor: Ulrike Felt, University of Vienna) investigated the co-production of assisted reproductive technologies and democracy in Austria. From 2018-2022 she worked as a researcher in the EU Horizon 2020 project InsSciDE (Inventing a Shared Science Diplomacy for Europe) and as a lecturer in Science and Technology Studies (STS).
Anna was a VALUE-VACC postdoctoral researcher between February 2023 and February 2025 and worked on practices and governance of vaccine R&D from a valuation studies perspective. As of March 2025, she will be working for a research funding agency and we are delighted for her (but missing her already).
Maximilian Martin, BA
In their master’s studies, Maximilian works on the broader fields of politics and gender as well as policy and governance analysis. They have lately focused on researching hostility towards sexual and gender minorities, feminism, and queerness from a queer-feminist and intersectional theory perspective. Their bachelor’s thesis (University of Vienna, 2022) examined the bio-essentialist and exclusionary frames of transphobic radical feminist civil society actors in Germany.
Research interests: Queerfeminism, intersectionality, antifeminist and queerphobic mobilizations, qualitative methods – and finishing their Master thesis!
Paula-Marie Pucker, BA MA
Paula-Marie Pucker studied political science at the University of Vienna specializing in policy- and governance analysis, qualitative methods, and Austrian politics. She was a research assistant at the FWF START project “Valuing Vaccination: a multi-sited policy-valuography” (PI: Katharina T. Paul) from July 2023 to September 2024 and took care of all administrative tasks and daily research business of VALUE-VACC. Paula now works as a journalist.