Ingrid Espinoza

Ingrid Espinoza is a Researcher at the Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality" and a PhD candidate at the chair of Public Administration and Organization Theory at the University of Konstanz. She works within the interdisciplinary research project „Inequality in Street-Level Bureaucracy: Linguistic Analysis of Public Service Encounters“ funded by the Cluster of Excellence „The Politics of Inequality". At the core of this project is the systematic exploration of the spoken communication between public officials and citizens. The project works towards answering two interrelated research questions: First, how does the design of the public administration’s language influence citizens’ satisfaction with public services? Second, how do the linguistic features of the interaction between public authorities and citizens relate to the (un)equal treatment of citizens and different societal groups?

In her PhD Project, she explores power dynamics in public service encounters with a focus on discrimination and racial inequality.

Ingrid holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Sociology as well as a master’s degree in Empirical Political and Social Research, both of which she gained at the University of Stuttgart. During her master studies she completed an internship at the trade union confederation “Unión Nacional de Trabajadores” in Mexico City, where she worked for the department of gender equality on an analysis of the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals of the Unites Nations Agenda 2030. Before starting her PhD, she worked as a research assistant at different chairs and research projects at the University of Stuttgart and as a scientific consultant for the department of integration at the Ministry of Social Affairs, Health and Integration Baden-Württemberg.