Professor Åsa von Schoultz (née Bengtsson) holds the Swedish Chair in Political Science at the University of Helsinki since 2017. Her research revolves around political behavior and public opinion. She is particularly interested in electoral competition within parties and citizens’ and elites’ perceptions on democratic processes. Other fields of interest are voting behavior, political participation and political behavior of minorities. 

von Schoultz has extensive experience of survey research among citizens and elites. She is the Director of the Finnish National Election Study 2021-2025, and the PI of the Finnish Parliamentary Candidates Study (2011-). She has run the European Values Study in Sweden (2017), and among Swedish speakers in Finland (2018).

Ongoing research projects (as PI):

- Intraparty competition: The neglected dimension of electoral competion (IntraComp), funded by the Academy of Finland for the period 2018-2022. https://www2.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/intraparty-competition 

- Mobile EU Electorates and democratic participation (MOBILEU), funded by the European Commission (Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme) for the period 2021-2023.

- Is local democracy facing a recruitment crisis (DemRek), funded by The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland for the period 2021-2025.