I am a research fellow and lecturer at the Institute of Political Science, Technische Universität Dresden (TU Dresden). Before moving to TU Dresden, I held positions at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU Berlin), King’s College London (KCL), University of Helsinki, Uppsala University, Hanse Institute for Advanced Study and Universität Hamburg. At KCL, I was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, convened and taught the “Foreign Policies of the EU” module, and was the principal investigator in a project funded by the European Commission under H2020 MSCA program.

I work on two research programs. The 1st research program lies at the sub-disciplinary interface between European studies, International Relations (IR), and comparative politics. The program studies EU’s external governance, as well as democracy and autocracy, democratic theory, and political regimes in the Eastern Partnership region. The 2nd research program is located at the interdisciplinary interface between IR, cognitive psychology, and behavioural economics. It builds on insights from prospect theory and studies competing regional integration in Europe and Eurasia.

I hold a PhD (2014) in political science from HU Berlin and I am the author of “Regime Dynamics in EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood: EU Democracy Promotion, International Influences, and Domestic Contexts” (2017, New York: Palgrave Macmillan).