Oliver Rittmann

Oliver is an Assistant Professor in Computational Social Science in the Department of Methodology. Before joining LSE, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) at the University of Mannheim, where he also completed his doctorate in Political Science in 2024.

Oliver's research sits at the intersection of quantitative political science and machine learning. He is particularly interested in the application of computer vision methods for the analysis of political audiovisual media content, including parliamentary speeches and political talk shows. Substantively, his work focuses on political representation, political communication, and discriminatory behaviour among political elites.

Publications:

Oliver Rittmann, Dominic Nyhuis, and Tobias Ringwald. "Gendered Patterns of Parliamentary Attention." The Journal of Politics, Online First. doi: 10.1086/739055.

Oliver Rittmann, Tobias Ringwald, and Dominic Nyhuis. "Public Opinion and Emphatic Legislative Speech: Evidence from an Automated Video Analysis." British Journal of Political Science, 2025, 55: e165. doi: 10.1017/S0007123425100872.

Oliver Rittmann, Marcel Neunhoeffer, and Thomas Gschwend. "How to Improve the Substantive Interpretation of Regression Results when the Dependent Variable is Logged." Political Science Research and Methods, 2025, 13(1):203–211. doi: 10.1017/psrm.2023.29.

Oliver Rittmann. "Legislators’ Emotional Engagement with Women’s Issues: Gendered Patterns of Vocal Pitch in the German Bundestag." British Journal of Political Science, 2024, 54(3): 937–945. doi: 10.1017/S0007123423000285.

Oliver Rittmann, Marie-Lou Sohnius, and Thomas Gschwend. "Candidate Awareness in Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: A Data-Driven Approach." Electoral Studies, 2023, 86: 1–13. doi: 10.1016/j.electstud.2023.102700.