I am Niklas Hänze, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Politics and Public Administration and the Cluster of Excellence The Politics of Inequality at the University of Konstanz. My research sits at the intersection of international relations, comparative politics, and environmental change. I study how political institutions and international organizations shape responses to environmental risks — and how those responses feed back into political behavior and social outcomes.
A central thread running through my research is how domestic and international political institutions shape populations’ exposure and vulnerability to climate impacts. At the domestic level, I examine how political factors like armed conflict amplify vulnerability to natural hazards, turning environmental events into humanitarian crises. At the international level, I study the allocation of climate finance: what drives how adaptation and mitigation aid is distributed sub-nationally, and whether multilateral funding reaches those most at risk. A third line of research explores the feedback loop in the other direction: how environmental shocks shape political behavior and institutions, affecting trust, conflict dynamics, and long-term climate adaptation.
My work has been published in Political Geography, the Journal of Peace Research, and Africa Spectrum. Methodologically, I rely on quantitative and spatial approaches to causal inference. Prior to my doctoral studies, I earned a BA from Osnabrück University and an MA from the University of Konstanz. I’m also the recipient of the Christiane-Rajewsky-Award (2023) by the German Association for Peace and Conflict Studies (Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Friedens- und Konfliktforschung).