Prof. Dr. Gwendolyn Sasse

Director
Einstein Professor for the Comparative Study of Democracy and Authoritarianism at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Annette Riedl

Prof. Dr. Gwendolyn Sasse

Director
Einstein Professor for the Comparative Study of Democracy and Authoritarianism at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Annette Riedl

Biography

Gwendolyn Sasse has been the Director of ZOiS since October 2016. Since April 2021, she has been Einstein Professor for the Comparative Study of Democracy and Authoritarianism at the Department of Social Sciences of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Prior to that, she was Professor of Comparative Politics at the Department of Politics and International Relations and at the Oxford School for Global and Area Studies at the University of Oxford. She maintains her connection with Oxford as a Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College. She is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the think tank Carnegie Europe. Her academic career began with the study of history, Slavonic studies and political science at the University of Hamburg and led her to an MSc and PhD in political science at the London School of Economics. After that, she took up a post as Assistant Professor at the Central European University, and then as Lecturer/Senior Lecturer at the London School of Economics before moving to Oxford in 2007 where she became a full professor in 2013.

Head of research cluster

ZOiS projects

Externally funded projects

Completed research projects

Research interests

  • Post-communist transition processes (with a particular focus on Ukraine)
  • Comparative democratisation and authoritarianism
  • War and ethnic conflicts in Eastern Europe
  • Migration from and within Eastern Europe
  • Protest dynamics
  • EU eastward enlargement/Eastern Partnership

 SELECTED PUBLICATIONS