Biography
Vanessa’s research examines how European fiscal and financial governance adapts to financial crises, pandemics, and rising geopolitical tensions. As a political economist and sociologist, her curiosity thrives at the intersection of technocratic influence, political interests, and market developments that shape European integration.
During the first year of her Max Weber Fellowship, Vanessa published research from her PhD thesis on European government debt statistics and off-balance sheet liabilities. She will continue this work in her second year, while also developing a new research project on the capacity of the European insurance sector to adapt to multiple crises.
Before coming to the EUI, Vanessa was a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG) in Cologne, where she worked on the political economy of European off-balance sheet policies, mapping and comparing national and European-level differences. This project built on her dissertation, which analyzed the biases in European public debt indicators that leave ample room for the growth of off-balance sheet liabilities, such as policy banks and public-private partnerships.
Vanessa received her PhD from the University of Cologne and was a member of the International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy (IMPRS-SPCE). Prior to her PhD, she conducted research on European shadow banking regulation and insurance regulation. Her work has been published in Competition & Change and the Journal of Economic Policy Reform.
Fields of expertise: european integration, fiscal governance, financial regulation, insurance, public debt, off-balance sheet, shadow banking, financial markets