I am a Postdoc in Political Science at Sciences Po Paris. I previously completed my PhD at the University of Zurich, and before that worked as a data scientist at Microsoft.

My research is focused on value pluralism and political communication. I explore pressing contemporary challenges to democracy, both theoretical and practical. This has included the rise of anti-pluralist claims and their formal inclusion in representative institutions, the capacity of deliberative democracy to answer them, and the measurement of how discursive representation evolves in political text.

• Democratic Theory: Deliberative democracy and value pluralism, focusing on will formation and discursive representation.
• Political Communication: Rhetorical mechanisms beyond persuasion, focusing on moralisation and elite polarisation.
• Computational Text Analysis: Measurement of normative concepts, focusing on the evolution of discourses and social group representation.

You can view my CV updated on May 2025 here

Table of Contents

• Publications
  • Published Papers
  • Papers Under Review
  • Working Papers
• Grants
• Teaching
  • Graduate Level
  • Undergraduate Level
  • Supervision
• Selected Voluntary Work
• Research Assistant Work
• Education
• Experience
• Data and Resources
  • Models

Publications

Published Papers

• How to measure political polarization in text-as-data? A scoping review of computational social science approaches - Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 2024. Full View

Papers Under Review

• Detecting Attitudes in Political Rhetoric: A Survey-to-Text Approach - C. Pereira, Presented at EPSA 2024 and APSA 2025.
• Detecting the Evolution of Discursive Representation: An Unsupervised Learning Approach - C. Pereira, Presented at CIS Zurichberg Colloquium 2025, TADA 2025, Monash-Paris-Warwick-Zurich-CEPR Text-As-Data Workshop 2025.
• Democracy and the Will Formation Problems of Claims with Opposing Values - C. Pereira

Working Papers

• Pandemic Effects on Narratives of Nationhood - C. Pereira, P. Singh, A. Wimmer, Presented at APSA 2026

Grants

• 5 000 CHF: Funding from UZH for coursework at Bocconi University, 2025: Advanced Microeconomics and Game Theory
• 8 000 CHF: Funding from CIS (UZH + ETH) for Gender Bias Detector, 2024: working paper with Claudia Marangon (ETH)
• 5 000 CHF: Computational Methods Working Group, 2023 CMWG

Teaching

Graduate Level

• Deep Learning for Social Sciences: Teaching Assistant with Prof. Dr. Marco Steenbergen: 2023 2024 [2025]
• Deep Learning for Text and Vision: Teaching Assistant with Prof. Dr. Marco Steenbergen: Essex Summer School 2024 [2025] [2026]

Undergraduate Level

• Why don’t people vote? Understanding the void: Seminar Syllabus - BA 2024. Access
• Computational Approach to Deliberation: Co-taught with Valeria Vuk; Seminar Syllabus - BA 2023. Access

Supervision

• BA Thesis Supervision 2025: Lea Schubarth

Selected Voluntary Work

• European Network Conference 2024: Organizing Committee. Website
• Computational Methods Working Group: Responsible for maintaining the group’s website and organizing workshops CMWG

Research Assistant Work

• Columbia University: Research Assistant for Prerna Singh and Andreas Wimmer (2024-2025)

Education

• PhD in Political Science, University of Zurich, 2022 (Sep) - 2026 (Sep) Swiss National Foundation Project
• Master’s in International Studies, ISCTE - Portugal, 2020-2022
• Master’s in Biomedical Engineering, University of Twente - Netherlands, 2014-2016
• Bachelor’s in Biomedical Engineering, IST - Portugal, 2012-2014

Experience

• Data Scientist, Microsoft - EMEA (Spain based), 2016-2020
• Microsoft Research, HoloLens Team - Redmond (USA), 2016
• Invited Lecturer in Machine Learning, ISEG - Portugal, 2020-2022

Data and Resources

Models

• PopTech: Populism and Technocracy text classifier using European attitudinal survey items as ground truth. Download
• RAD: Relational Asymmetry Discovery to identify marginal classes in text using a distributional approach. Public Python package upon publication. Download