Congratulations to Katarzyna Kochloeffel, Max Bradley, Nora Soederberg, Odysseas Konstantinakos, Tarek Jaziri, Annamaria Laudini, and Ludvig Schulze from the Department of Political and Social Sciences, for receiving their doctorates in June 2026, following unanimous jury decisions.
On 1 June 2026, Katarzyna Kochlöffel defended her thesis Radical Right Populist Parties' Mainstreaming Process. Opportunities, Threats, or a Test of Political Cunning. The Case Studies of Poland and Slovakia, which examine the transition of Radical Right Populist (RRP) parties in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) from radical niche to political mainstream, and the impact of this process on their electoral potential. The thesis argues that the RRPs’ mainstreaming process has a Janus-faced quality. It offers an opportunity by normalising the radical agenda in the political debate and presents a threat related to the rise of new competitors, such as mainstream parties accommodating the RRP agenda and the emergence of new RRPs, encouraged by weaker systemic constraints on their activity. Thus, RRP mainstreaming is not merely an advantage but a condition that these parties can either exploit or fail to leverage.
Read Kochlöffel’s thesis in Cadmus, the EUI’s research repository.
On 3 June 2026, Max Bradley defended his thesis A Divide, A Resource, and A Tool. How Education Reshapes Climate Politics. The dissertation investigates mass attitudes towards climate policies, focusing in particular on how they are structured, contextually determined, and directly shaped by education. The thesis consists of three empirical chapters and combines the analysis of data from eleven rounds of the European Social Survey and sectoral emissions data from the OECD with original survey data and a field experiment conducted with 1,845 students across ten French universities. As a result, Max demonstrates that education plays a multidimensional role in climate politics by shaping political conflict, conditioning economic adjustment, and building support for decarbonization in advanced democracies.
Read Bradley’s thesis in Cadmus, the EUI’s research repository.
On 12 June 2026, Nora Söderberg defended her dissertation Following Contested Categories. The Infrastructural Politics of Knowing Climate Mobility in Eastern Africa, which explores how the category of climate mobility is produced, formed and stabilised among international practitioners in Eastern Africa. The analysis is based on over 70 interviews and more than 60 hours of participant observation. As a result, Nora found that classifications become authoritative not through official definitions but through their continuous (re)production in flows, forms and visions of the future. Overall, with its rich theoretical framing and immersive fieldwork in Kenya, the thesis makes important contributions to IR theory, the politics and ethics of climate change and migration studies.
Read Söderberg’s thesis in Cadmus, the EUI’s research repository.
On 15 June 2026, Odysseas Konstantinakos defended his dissertation, Reality Check. European Macroeconomic Governance from Crisis to Crisis. The thesis asks how Europe governs its macroeconomy in an age of permanent crisis. Rather than studying European economic governance from the outside, through official documents, treaty texts, or public statements, it enters the institutional engine room where economic policy is actually made. Odysseas concludes that European institutions have not replaced one coherent macroeconomic paradigm with another; instead, they have learned to govern under conditions of enduring uncertainty, through the pragmatic exercise of technocratic power within a politically fragmented polity.
Read Konstantinakos’ thesis in Cadmus, the EUI’s research repository.
On 15 June 2026, Tarek Jaziri Arjona defended his thesis, The Social Foundations of Radical-Right Normalisation, which explores social mechanisms that drive the normalisation of radical-right parties. The dissertation shifts attention away from the top-down mechanisms that dominate existing explanations, instead advancing and exploring individual-level explanations. Using surveys and electoral data from Spain’s 2019 general elections, leveraging mobility data tracking movement between Spanish provinces and examining cases from the US, Netherlands, and Germany, Jaziri found that political norm change is driven not only by economic conditions but also by everyday social interactions and cross-class networks.
Read Arjona’s thesis in Cadmus, the EUI’s research repository.
On 16 June 2026, Annamaria Laudini defended her thesis entitled Transnational Social Mobility. Class, Caste, and Gender Relations in a “Mini Punjab” in Central Italy, which investigates how these ascribed categories of identity affect opportunities and outcomes of transnational migration, and how, in turn, the context of immigration reshapes class, caste, and gender relations. The dissertation found that caste and gender are key determinants of inequality in India: despite the expectation that their relevance would decline with increasing modernisation, in contemporary Indian society. These intersecting axes of identity continue to shape individuals’ life opportunities and outcomes and to regulate their socioeconomic relationships.
Read Laudini’s thesis in Cadmus, the EUI’s research repository.
On 26 June 2026, Ludvig Schulze defended his thesis entitled The Authoritarian Bargain: Building and Sustaining Popular Support under Dictatorship, which investigates the microfoundations of authoritarian stability, and asks how the material interests of autocrats and citizens converge to sustain undemocratic rule. Using the German Democratic Republic as a historical laboratory, the dissertation applies advanced causal inference methods. The findings suggest that authoritarian stability is not only a function of authoritarian control strategies but also depends on how ordinary citizens willingly sustain the institutions created by autocrats.
Read Schulze’s thesis in Cadmus, the EUI’s research repository.