Biography
Prior to that, I was a post-doctoral researcher at the Free University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. I hold an MPhil in Politics and a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford, UK, and have held research positions at the Free University of Berlin (Research College ‘The Transformative Power of Europe’), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
My research interests include international organizations, comparative regionalism, EU external relations and IR theory. I am currently involved in two larger projects that both deal with the determinants of variation in institutional design across regional organizations. The first project, conducted in cooperation with Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, aims to map and explain cross-sectional and temporal variation in the delegation and pooling of formal authority across 72 international organizations. In particular, the project explores the influence of incomplete contracting and the categorical distinction between general-purpose and task-specific organizations.
The second project, funded by a grant from the Daimler and Benz foundation, examines the influence of the European Union on the institutional design of regional organizations. Employing a mixed methods design, it explores the ways in which, and the conditions under which, such influence is likely to matter.