Professional Experience

Since May 2023

Product Manager

UNICEPTA

Automation of central company processes through agentic methods

Responsible for prompt management (development, testing, evaluation, training) and further process innovations.

Optimization of agent outputs through prompt pre-/post-processing, prompt injection, automatic prompt chaining, and SQL-based corrections

Report automation

March 2019 – May 2023

Senior Researcher and Project Manager

self-employed

Acquisition, design and implementation of research projects for public and private clients in the fields of digitization, political opinion research, as well as project evaluation and consulting.

Preparation of reports based on large-scale quantitative and/ or qualitative data

Communication of reports, studies or evaluation results on panel discussions or directly to clients

November 2018 – February 2019

Senior Project Manager

policy matters, Berlin

Conception, design, coordination and management of international comparative opinion research projects in the field of European politics

Consulting for political foundations and parties

Short-term employment due to unforeseen termination of business operations by the partners

April 2016 – October 2018

Researcher

Berlin Social Science Center (WZB Berlin)

Researcher at “Demokratiemonitor”, a collaborative research project between the WZB and the Bertelsmann Foundation, to assess the role of the media in the quality of democracy

May 2014 – June 2015

Researcher

University of Oxford, Nuffield College

Research project on diaspora politicians career paths

Collected data and provided research support for the Croatian case in a research project on Eastern European diaspora politicians

July 2012 – November 2012

Tutor

University of Oxford, St. Anne’s College

Led individual one-on-one tutorials in the Oxbridge style in Comparative Politics and Politics in Europe (Politics 206)

2011

Tutor

Cusanus foundation, Bonn

Led block seminars on “external democracy promotion”

2007 – 2013

Consultant

European Parliament and German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation

Presented studies to the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament in Brussels

Performed risk analysis on Croatia and South-Eastern Europe

Advised MPs, government officials, visiting delegations in background briefings

2007 – 2012

Policy Adviser

German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), Berlin

Research Unit EU-Integration

Impacted policy decisions in background briefings with members of the German and European Parliament and the German Foreign Office

Publicly communicated current policy scenarios in policy briefs, panel discussions and media interviews

Wrote grant application for The Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission

Initiated a policy dialogue between the SWP and European Policy Centre (EPC)

2006

Researcher

University of Zagreb, University of Konstanz (lead)

Research project: “The Relevance of Perceptions of Corruption to Crime Prevention”

Led research team on financing of presidential elections

Coordinated a research team on the reform of electoral financing in Croatia

Produced project reports and conference contributions

October 2005 – December 2005

Researcher

Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation, Zagreb

Research project: “Croatian Accession to the EU”

Designed and carried out a comparative research project on the structure of the Croatian EU accession-negotiation team and the process of negotiation talks

Authored a double-blind peer-reviewed book chapter

February 2005 – September 2005

Intern

Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration, Zagreb

Coordinated EU pre-accession programmes (Project cycle management of PHARE, ISPA & SAPARD)

Contributed to transposing of the Acquis Communautaire into Croatian law

Projects

Since 2026

Wahlkampfradar — Creator & Developer

Private project · since 2026

Automated live dashboard for observing German state election campaigns (Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, both 20 September 2026). Fully automated two-hour analysis cycle: collection of press releases, news coverage (rbb24, Berliner Morgenpost, B.Z. Berlin), search and Wikipedia signals, candidate data; LLM-based classification and contextualisation; public presentation with named sources and stated limitations. wahlkampfradar.de · Berlin 2026

Education

2010 – 2015

Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil)

in Politics with distinction (“no corrections”), University of Oxford, Department of Politics and International Relations

1998 – 2004

German Diploma in Political Science

Free University Berlin

Relevant Skills

AI & agentic systems: agent orchestration with n8n, CrewAI, LangChain/LangGraph, Microsoft AutoGen and Claude Code/MCP; prompt engineering & management incl. DSPy and systematic evaluation; agentic process automation in production; RAG pipelines (OpenAI Embedding API, Pinecone); Python for NLP

Data collection: webscraping with outwit and python, extensive experience with setting up online surveys, building quantitative questionnaires and programming with Limesurvey, years of experience with expert and elite interviews

Data analysis: automated sentiment analysis with python (nltk package), software-assisted qualitative content analysis with MaxQDA and Atlas.TI, descriptive statistics with Stata and R

Data visualization: plotly (python), Adobe Creative Suite (In-Design, Illustrator, Photoshop), Piktochart, Canva

Languages

German: native speaker

English: Level C2

Bosnian/ Croatian/ Serbian: Level C1

French: Level B1

Awards

Writing up award, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford

Full doctoral scholarship, Cusanus-Foundation, Bonn

Research fellowship, German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP)

Voluntary Work

Taught German for a beginners’ class of refugees, ITAP Friedrichshain, Berlin

Befriended and supported children and teenagers in children hospice Helen & Douglas House, Oxford

Co-organized and coordinated of the Croatian student project “Beetle Tour Europe”

Co-organized and coordinated the European short-film-festival Moviemiento, financed by EU-Youth, European Commission