Welcome! I am a political scientist interested in unravelling some of the most important challenges for democracy in a globalizing and digitalizing world.

I work as Professor of Comparative Politics at the School of Economics and Political Science [»] at the University of St.Gallen (HSG) [»], where I also serve as the Academic Director of the MA programme "International Affairs & Governance" [»] and co-direct the Institute of Political Science [»].

My research programme is located at the interface of Comparative, International and European Politics. Ongoing projects evolve around three main topics:

• the promotion of democratic rules and practices through conditionality and functional cooperation, with a focus on the EU’s accession and neighbourhood policies;
• the evolution of political attitudes in times of a crisis of representation, with a focus on populism and governance beyond the nation-state; and
• the role of telecommunications companies in the implementation of state-ordered internet shutdowns, with a focus on the identities of company owners and their political-legal responsibilities.

I received my Ph.D. from ETH Zurich in 2011. Prior to returning to Switzerland in 2015, I was a Max-Weber-Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence (2011/2) and then joined the Department of Politics & International Studies at the University of Warwick, first as Leverhulme-Trust-Fellow (2012/3), then Assistant Professor (2013/4) and Associate Professor (2014/5). In Warwick, I headed the Centre for Studies in Democratization and was involved in the introduction of a BA and a MA programme in Politics, Big Data and Quantitative Methods.


Advice and feedback hours for students

Tuesdays, 4-6pm in room 52-5030.

To register, students are kindly asked to send an email to Mrs Woodtly, clearly specifying their requests. Thanks!

News

Our short video 'Citzens Offline' now online! The video problematizes the role of telcos in state-ordered internet shutdowns
 

Congratulations to Dr des Karina Mross! Karina shines with a dissertation on democracy support and peaceful post-conflict democratization
 

New Policy Report. Tina Freyburg (together with the EDP network) publishes report on democracy promotion in the 21st century
 

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