Congratulations to Anna Rajkowska, Jory Weyns, Ieva Hofmane, Jan Lepeu, Foteini-Maria Vassou, Emil Kamalov, and Ramin Shirali from the EUI Department of Political and Social Sciences, for receiving their doctorates in August and September 2025, after unanimous decisions from the jury.
On 28 August, Anna Rajkowska defended her thesis entitled Militant Trajectories of Turkish Female Jihadis. Mobilization, Logistics, and the Role of Women-Only Spaces in the Jihadi Struggle. Anna’s PhD dissertation offers an in-depth analysis of the militant trajectories of female jihadis who joined ISIS from Turkey, based on an original dataset of over 150 cases. By focusing on women-only spaces, she provides a groundbreaking perspective on how such spaces function, their internal hierarchies, and their relationship to male-dominated structures in the global jihadi project, illustrating how the group operated at the intersection of kinship ties, local dynamics, and transnational militancy.
Read Rajkowska’s thesis in Cadmus.
On 1 September, Jory Weyns defended his thesis entitled Orchestrating Geoeconomic Promotion: A Historical Institutionalist Account of Export Finance in the European Union. The thesis engages with how the European political economy, and the integration project at large, evolves in light of ongoing ruptures in the global economic order. It challenges the view that there is a “geoeconomic turn” in and of the European Union. Based on an in-depth study of the OECD’s most prevalent industrial policy, state-sponsored export finance, the thesis reveals considerable continuity in government support and offers a theoretically and empirically compelling explanation: decades of liberalisation and privatisation have reduced state capacities for more radical change.
Read Weyns’ thesis in Cadmus.
On 8 September, Ieva Hofmane defended her thesis Youth Political Representation in Latvia and Estonia: From Electoral Entry to Parliamentary Action. This impressive study examines elections, political careers, and parliamentary speeches of politicians in these two under-researched democracies, extending standard theories of electoral and political processes. The thesis comprises three interconnected studies—on elections in Latvia, political careers in Latvia, and parliamentary speeches in Estonia—and draws on extensive new primary data, using methods such as sequence and cluster analysis and computational text analysis. Across these studies, Ieva finds that younger candidates act as “untested cards,” with preferential votes providing parties with valuable information about candidate quality. Entering parliament at a younger age does not necessarily ensure a stable political career, and while younger and older MPs speak on similar topics, the rise of younger politicians has led to a more balanced coverage of policy issues in parliament. Together, these findings challenge standard views of voter or party “discrimination” against younger politicians, revealing more nuanced generational dynamics in political life.
Read Hofmane’s thesis in Cadmus.
Jan Lepeu defended his dissertation on 17 September. His thesis, I Sanction Therefore I Am: A Genealogy of the Emergence of International Sanctioning as an EU Foreign Policy Practice, explores how sanctioning has become central to EU foreign policy. The jury—Jeff Checkel (EUI; supervisor), Stephanie Hofmann (EUI; co-supervisor), Niklas Heijl Bremberg (Stockholm University), and Clara Portela (University of Valencia)—unanimously concluded that Lepeu’s thesis makes a major contribution to IR theory, adding a historical dimension to practice theory and advancing our understanding of why the EU has become a sanctioning “superpower.” The jury congratulated Dr. Lepeu on his achievement.
Read Lepeu’s thesis in Cadmus.
On 18 September, Foteini-Maria Vassou defended her thesis on Identity Under Pressure: Migration, Marginalization, and Political Integration in Early 20th Century Greece. In this impressive project, Foteini addresses several salient contemporary topics: the loss of representation by a particular social group (in this case, Greek refugees expelled from Turkey); how within-group heterogeneity shapes political mobilisation (in this case, the social and geographic heterogeneity of the Greek refugee communities); and how linguistic repression shapes national identity formation (in this case, the repression of Greek identity during the period of annexation by Bulgaria during the Second World War). Putting together primary data from electoral records, census, and archival records, Foteini finds that the refugees (expelled from Turkey in the early 1920s) shifted from substantive to descriptive representation—voting for refugee candidates after the Liberals abandoned their interests. Greater heterogeneity within refugee communities reduced their ability to coordinate electorally, and, contrary to expectations, Bulgarian repression did not provoke a nationalist backlash. Together, these findings make an important contribution to the fast-growing field of historical political economy.
Read Vassou Foteini’s thesis in Cadmus.
On 19 September, Emil Kamalov defended his thesis Challenging Autocracies from Abroad: Essays on Russian Political Emigration (2022–2024). Kamalov’s dissertation examines how political emigrants from authoritarian regimes sustain extraterritorial opposition politics despite the risks of transnational repression and divergent host-country responses. Political emigrants—those forced abroad primarily for opposing autocratic regimes—remain engaged in homeland politics through protests, lobbying, and advocacy. Drawing on a unique multi-wave panel survey of over 18,000 Russian emigrants who fled after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine (the OutRush project), the dissertation advances theoretical and empirical understanding of opposition abroad in the context of geopolitical tension and authoritarian reach. In general, the thesis offers an integrated account of extraterritorial opposition politics, emphasizing the interplay of emigrant strategies, authoritarian repression, discrimination, and geopolitical context.
Read Kamalov’s thesis in Cadmus.
On 30 September, Ramin Shirali defended his thesis Why Are Some Public Servants More Professional Than Others? How Individual–Institution Interactions Make—or Break—Good Governance. This dissertation addresses one of the central questions in public administration: why do some public servants behave “better” than others? Shirali conceptualises “better” as adherence to ethical and professional norms: upholding the impartiality rule, willingness to exert an extra effort to innovate in public service delivery, and corruption sanctions. The committee—Victor LaPuente (University of Gothenburg, co-supervisor), Robert H. Cox (University of South Carolina), Arnout van de Rijt, and Ellen Immergut (supervisor)—congratulated Dr. Shirali on his path-breaking research.
Read Shirali’s thesis in Cadmus.