ICENES Steering Committee
The Steering Committee of ICENES
The steering committee of ICENES consists of Eva H. Önnudóttir, Ólafur Þ. Harðarson, Agnar Freyr Helgason, Hulda Þórisdóttir and Jón Gunnar Ólafsson.
You can contact the ICENES steering committee via icenes@hi.is.
Eva H. Önnudóttir
Eva H. Önnudóttir has been the director of ICENES since 2016. Eva is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Iceland. She received her doctorate from the University of Mannheim in 2015. Her research focuses on electoral behaviour, political parties and elites, elections and the implementation of democracy. She has published several papers, both single authored and co-authored in journals such as Party Politics, Representation, West-European Politics, Icelandic Review of Politics & Administration and Scandinavian Political Studies, and she is the leading author of Electoral Politics in Crisis After the Great Recession: Change, Fluctuations and Stability in Iceland (2021).
Ólafur Th. Hardarson
Ólafur Th. Hardarson is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Iceland, where he started his academic career in 1980. He was Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and later the School of Social Sciences 2001-2013. Hardarson obtained his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He founded the Icelandic National Election Study in 1983 and was the sole principal investigator until 2013. His book Parties and Voters in Iceland (1995) is the first scholarly analysis of Icelandic voting behaviour. Hardarson is a co-author of The Nordic Voter: Myths of Exceptionalism (2014) and Electoral Politics in Crisis after the Great Recession: Change, Fluctuations and Stability in Iceland (2021). He has also written numerous book chapters and articles in peer reviewed journals. Hardarson has been a regular commentator on elections and politics for Icelandic State Television since 1986.
Agnar Freyr Helgason
Agnar Freyr Helgason is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Iceland. He received his doctorate from The Ohio State University in the United States in 2015. His research focus is on political attitudes, and electoral behaviour, but he has also worked on the politics of taxation and the welfare state, the impact of the 2008 economic collapse on the living standards and material well-being, electoral systems and quantitative methodology. Agnar is one of the authors of Electoral Politics in Crisis after the Great Recession: Change, Fluctuations and Stability in Iceland (2021).
Hulda Þórisdóttir
Hulda Þórisdóttir is a Professor at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Iceland. She received her doctorate in social psychology from New York University, after which she worked for two years as a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University. She joined the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Iceland in 2009. In 2018-2020, Hulda was on leave from the University of Iceland and was an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Psychology at NYU in Abu Dhabi. Hulda's research is in the field of political psychology. In particular, she has studied how ideology shapes, and is shaped, by various psychological factors. Hulda is particularly interested in how threats and fears (real or artificial) affect political views. Hulda is one of the authors of Electoral Politics in Crisis After the Great Recession: Change, Fluctuations and Stability in Iceland (2021).
Jón Gunnar Ólafsson
Jón Gunnar Ólafsson is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Iceland. He completed his PhD in Media and Communications in 2019 from Goldsmiths, University of London. His doctoral research focused on political coverage in the news media and on social media, which was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK. Jón Gunnar has participated in various international research projects concerning media and politics, including the Media for Democracy Monitor and the Worlds of Journalism Study. His research has been published in international journals including the Journal of European Public Policy and Nordicom Review. Jón Gunnar joined the ICENES’ Steering Committee in 2021 and is in charge of its media component.
