Biography

I arrived at the EUI from Northwestern University in Chicago, where I obtained a Ph.D. in Political Science (in 2006) and an MSc in Mathematical Methods for the Social Sciences (in 2002). Before embarking on my dissertation, I studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Trinity College Oxford and worked as research assistant at the Social Science Research Centre (WZB) in Berlin. During the field research and write-up phases of my thesis, I was based first at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and then, from 2003 to 2006, at the Max-Planck Institute in Cologne.
My research is in the area of comparative political economy. I am particularly interested in the tension between politics and markets and by how this battle plays out in the European political arena. At the moment, I focus on the politics of corporate governance.
My dissertation - entitled European Integration and the Clash of Capitalisms - compared German, French and British government positions on EU directives concerning takeovers and worker participation from 1970 to the present.
A joint paper with Martin Höpner, recently published in Comparative European Politics, uses roll call data to map cleavage lines inside the European Parliament. Two other papers, currently under review, respectively look at employer lobbying and national patterns of party competition. My latest project investigates how disputes between the advocates of shareholder- and stakeholder-oriented company laws are resolved inside the European Commission.