Biography

I am a post-doctoral researcher in European Politics at the Centre of Comparative and International Studies, ETH Zurich in Switzerland and will be on leave from this position for the duration of the Max Weber Fellowship. I completed my Ph.D. on transnational influences and democratic socialization in authoritarian contexts at ETH Zurich in 2010 (committee: Professors Liesbet Hooghe, Sandra Lavenex, and Frank Schimmelfennig).

Prior to joining the European University Institute, I was a lecturer at ETH Zurich and the University of Lucerne, where I taught graduate and undergraduate seminars in European Studies and International Relations.

My research interests are in the intersection of International Relations and European Union (EU) Studies, more precisely in the areas of EU external governance, external democratization, and international socialization. My current primary research explores subtle processes of democratization that are possibly a side-product of external activities undertaken for purposes other than democracy promotion. Here, I analyze to what extent and under what conditions transnational influences such as social and communication linkages and inter-administrative cooperation shape the attitudes of state officials toward democratic governance in stable authoritarian regimes, notably Morocco and Jordan. My work appears in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of European Public Policy, Democratization, and Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen (the German Journal on International Relations).

My research is awarded with the European Union Studies Association (EUSA) 2011 Award for the Best Conference Paper, the International Studies Association (ISA) 2010 Carl Beck Award, and the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) 2010 Best Graduate Student Paper Award of its Standing Group on International Relations (SGIR).