Anvita Pant is a political psychologist at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. They are pursuing their PhD in the project “Survivor: Uncovering the Selection Process of Political Elites”. They are currently investigating personality-based and normative selection processes of political elites. They are interested in understanding how personality and identity shape political career ambitions. They also investigate how political selection differs across right-wing and left-wing political contexts, in order to explain the current rise of democratic backsliding and authoritarianism worldwide. They hold a Research Master in Social Sciences from Universiteit van Amsterdam and a Master in Psychology from University of Delhi. Being trained as a mixed method researcher, they advocate using mixed-method approaches to answer societally relevant questions. Currently they use surveys, panel design, and experiments to collect data.
