Paulina Pospieszna – PhD in political science and administration (2019). Paulina Pospieszna is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland, Poznan. She received her Ph.D. (2010) in Political Science from the University of Alabama and worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Konstanz and the University of Mannheim, Germany.
Her main research interests are democracy promotion, democratic innovations, instruments of deliberative democracy (e.g. citizens’ assemblies), democratization and democracy backsliding, civil society, advocacy groups, NGOs, civic participation (especially youth activism), aid and sanctions as foreign policy tools. Geographically, she mainly focuses on Central and Eastern Europe. In her research she combines quantitative and qualitative approaches. She has published articles in Democratization, Europe-Asia Studies, Journal of International Relations & Development, International Interactions, Journal of Peace Research, Problems of Post-Communism, amongst others. Recently, her new monograph on Democracy Assistance Bypassing Governments in Recipient Countries Supporting the “Next Generation”” (Routledge, 2019). She is also the author of the book Democracy Assistance from the Third Wave: Polish Engagement in Belarus and Ukraine (University of Pittsburgh Press PITT Series in Russian and East European Studies, 2014).
Deputy editor of the journal Communist and Post-Communist Studies (CPCS).
She was the manager of two projects funded by the National Science Center (NCN) on democracy promotion and EU sanctions (with the University of Constance, co-funded by DFG), a contractor in an international project on the condition of civil society in the post-communist region 30 years after the transition led by Jagiellonian University. She has participated in other international research projects, including a project on interest groups (CIG) and two projects on mediation in social conflicts funded by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung and the Folke Bernadotte Academy. In addition, she participated in the EU Tempus HEART project, which aimed to develop teaching methods and design human rights courses and programs at universities in five Western Balkan countries in cooperation with EU universities. She was a member of COST Action European Network of Conflict Research (ENCoRe) and COST Action Disaster Bioethics.
He currently serves as national coordinator at Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) and participates in the European project ValEUs -Research & Education Network on Contestations to EU Foreign Policy (ERASMUS-JMO-2023-NETWORKS, Project ID: 101127800). The project, which involves 21 partner institutions from 18 countries and five continents, aims to promote, among other things. The new role of universities as responsible actors and committed partners for conflict-prone regions such as Ukraine.
Paulina Pospieszna leads the Democratic Innovations research group and directs two grants:
- Deliberative Innovations in Central and Eastern Europe – a panacea for democracy in crisis? (DelibDemCEE), 2022-2027 (DelibDemCEE). 2021/42/E/HS5/00155, Sonata Bis, National Science Center
- Integrating deliberative processes versus their impact: Lessons from the European wave of citizen panels (i4i). 2023/05/Y/HS5/00027, Weave Unisono, National Science Center
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