Ms. Annika Kaiser

Professional Background

Annika Kaiser is a PhD candidate in international and development politics at Heidelberg University’s Alfred-Weber-Institute for Economics. Her dissertation uses newly digitized archival data from postwar Germany to investigate how authoritarian legacies influence judicial behavior in transitional regimes. Ms. Kaiser received her master’s degree in politics and technology from the Technical University of Munich and holds bachelor's degrees in political science, history, and economics from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Her academic training focuses on quantitative political economy, including quasi-experimental research designs, judicial data analysis, and applications of machine learning.

Ms. Kaiser has held research positions at Oxford University and the World Bank, where she contributed to evaluations of living standards and labor data in Nigeria. Previously, she worked as a public sector data analyst at KPMG and as a research assistant at experimental economics labs in Munich. She has presented her work at conferences including the World Congress of Political Science, the International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP), the Barcelona School of Economics Summer School, and the Beyond Basic Questions Workshop in Stuttgart. She also participated in the United Nations Youth Association of Germany. 

Ms. Kaiser co-leads a major archival data collection project on judicial continuity in post-Nazi Germany, combining historical insights with contemporary relevance to judicial independence and democratic resilience. Her research draws on multilingual sources and international archival work, and has involved research trips in South Korea, Japan, China, Kenya, and the United States. 

Fellowship Research

While at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a Sosland Foundation Fellow, Annika Kaiser will conduct research on how ordinary individuals became affiliated with the Nazi regime, exploring the roles of economic incentive, career advancement, and judicial bias during and after the Third Reich. Her project explores how affiliation with the Nazi Party shaped professional and economic advantages, particularly through the expropriation of Jewish property. It investigates whether postwar judges with Nazi ties continued to display ideological bias in non–Nazi criminal cases during the democratic transition.

Ms. Kaiser plans to utilize large-scale data from denazification questionnaires (Fragebögen) along with the Museum’s records on Aryanization and Austrian judicial proceedings to examine how social networks, professional ambitions, and Aryanization policies influenced party membership and everyday collaboration. These sources will enable a more comprehensive understanding of how economic and institutional continuities shaped both complicity under the Nazi regime and the pursuit of justice in its aftermath.

Residency Period: September 1, 2025–April 31, 2026