:template: frontpage.html
:title: Yet another academic ...

===================================
 Welcome to Martin Elff's website!
===================================

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      About Me
      ^^^^^^^^
      
      .. image:: Martin-round.png
         :align: left
         :width: 150px
    
      My name is Martin Elff, I am a political scientist with research interests 
      in political behaviour, political sociology, comparative politics, and the methodology of
      political and social sciences. Besides teaching, research, academic
      governance, I also wrote some software, mostly in *R*.
    
      Since 2015 I am a `professor of political sociology at Zeppelin
      University <https://www.zu.de/lehrstuehle/polit-soz/>`__
      (Friedrichshafen, Germany). 
    
      You can also find me here:
    
      - `@melff.bsky.social <https://bsky.app/profile/melff.bsky.social>`__
      - `@martin_elff@science.social <https://sciences.social/@martin_elff>`__ 
      - `@elff@fosstodon.org <https://fosstodon.org/@elff>`__ 
      - Twitter: `@martin\_elff <https://twitter.com/martin_elff>`__
      - Github: http://github.com/melff
      - ORCID: |ORCID ID icon| `0000-0001-9032-9739 <https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9032-9739>`__
      - Web of Science: `J-1604-2019 <https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/rid/J-1604-2019>`__

      :doc:`Read more ... <about>`

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      Selected publications
      ^^^^^^^^
      
      .. bibsource:: ./publications.bib
      .. bibliography::
         :keys: elff.et.al:multilevel.improving,
         :link-details:
    
      .. image:: DataManagement_in_R.png
         :width: 150px
         :target: book/data-management-r
         :align: right
    
      .. bibliography::
         :keys: elff:data.management,
                elff.ziaja:democracy.indicators,
                elff:dynamic.model.coded.texts,
                elff:divisions.positions.voting,
         :by-year:
         :reverse:
         :link-details:

      :doc:`Read more ... <publications>`

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      Selected working papers
      ^^^^^^^^

      .. bibsource:: ./papers.bib
      .. bibliography::
         :keys: elff:valence.position.both,
                dassonneville.elff.marcinkiewicz:transformation.religious,
                rajski.elff:context.pid,
                elff:much.ado,
                elff:finite.mixtures.tactical.voting,
                elff:testing.constant.probability,
         :by-year:
         :reverse:
         :link-details:

      :doc:`Read more ... <papers>`
      

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      Software 
      ^^^^^^^^
      
      There are a few software packages I wrote for helping me in my research, creating
      this website, or which I just wrote for fun and out of curiosity (however I
      have only little time for this).
    
      On this website you find information about the following *R* packages in
      particular:
      
      - `R package "memisc": Tools for Managing Survey Data and Creating Tables of Estimates and Data Summaries <https://melff.github.io/memisc/>`__
      - `R package "mclogit": Multinomial Logit Models, with or without Random Effects or Overdispersion <https://melff.github.io/mclogit/>`__
      - `R package "munfold": Multidimensional Metric Unfolding <https://melff.github.io/munfold/>`__
      - `R package "RKernel": Yet another R Kernel for Jupyter <https://melff.github.io/RKernel/>`__
      - :doc:`software/mpred`
      - :doc:`software/manifestos`
      - :doc:`software/iimm`
      - :doc:`software/EMfit`

      :doc:`Read more ... <software>`

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      Research interests
      ^^^^^^^^
      
      My are research interests in the 
      following areas:
    
      - Political behaviour, in particular electoral behaviour and its relation
        with social structure. More specifically:
    
        - class voting
        - religious voting
        - long term change
        - the influence of parties' (changing) positions
        - with a focus on Germany
        - with a focus on (Western) Europe
      
      - Reconstructing the political positions of parties
      - Quantitative methods of the social sciences
    
        - Multilevel modelling
        - Modelling of qualitative/categorical dependent variables
        - Cross-level inference

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      :class-header: bg-six sd-text-center sd-font-weight-bold 
      :class-footer: bg-f2

      Teaching subjects
      ^^^^^^^^
      
      Throughout my career I :doc:`taught a couple of subjects <teaching>`, including
    
      - Political sociology and political behaviour
    
        - Introduction to political sociology
        - Attitude formation and public opinion
        - Electoral behaviour
    
      - Comparative politics
    
        - German politics
        - West European politics
        - Parties and party systems
    
      - Socials science research methods
    
        - Research design and methods (at various levels)
        - Data analysis (at various levels)
        - Data analysis and graphics with *R*
        - Mathematical tools for social scientists

      :doc:`Read more ... <teaching>`

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      Recent posts
      ^^^^^^^^
      
      .. postlist:: 6
         :date: %d %B %Y
    
      :doc:`Read more ... <blog>`

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      About this website
      ^^^^^^^^
      
      This site is built with `Sphinx`_, a generator for documentation and static
      websites, using a heavily modified variant of the `insipid theme`_. The
      website builds on flat files in `restructured text`_ format and in some
      instances on `Jupyter`_ notebooks.
    
      Because it is built with Sphinx, there is a bit of `Python`_ programming
      involved in this website. In particular I wrote a few Python modules that 
      extend Sphinx for the purposes of this website, e.g.
    
      - attaching files to webpages
      - creating bibliographies and linking publication details from `BibTeX files`_
      - improving the navigation of the site
      - providing an infrastructer for blog posts (with much inspiration from `ABlog`_)
    

.. toctree::
   :hidden:

   blog
   about
   publications
   papers
   data
   software
   teaching


.. |ORCID ID icon| image:: https://orcid.org/sites/default/files/images/orcid_16x16.png

.. |R| replace:: *R*
.. _R: http://www.r-project.org                           

.. _Sphinx: https://www.sphinx-doc.org/
.. _Python: https://www.python.org/
.. _Jupyter: https://jupyter.org/
.. _LaTeX: https://www.latex-project.org/
.. _TeX: https://www.tug.org/whatis.html

.. _insipid theme: https://insipid-sphinx-theme.readthedocs.io/
.. _dvisvgm: https://dvisvgm.de/
.. _BibTeX files: http://www.bibtex.org/Format/

.. _restructured text: https://docutils.sourceforge.io/rst.html

.. _ABlog: https://ablog.readthedocs.io/