Welcome!

I am a political economist at the European University Institute where I started my PhD in 2019. In the spring of 2022, I have also been a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Socities. Previously, I was at Radboud University where I did both my bachelor’s and master’s in political science, and afterwards stayed on as a junior lecturer for one year.

My academic interests lie at the intersection of political economy and economic sociology. In the broadest terms, I am interested in the structural transformations of our economies and societies in the face of technological change and climate change under conditions of mounting geopolitical pressures.

In my dissertation, I investigate the political economy of EU industrial policy. As one of the main governmental levers for fostering structural change, the European Commission has spearheaded several initiatives in the fields of competition policy, digitalization and the green energy markets. Given the market-making and non-interventionist nature of modern state bureaucracies, this about-face is surprising and opens up the three questions currently guiding my research: (1) how are market-making institutions repurposed for state intervention, (2) what are the coalitional and ideational politics underpinning economic paradigm shifts, and (3) how do geopolitics shape economic policy? Beyond this, I am also interested in the social foundations of markets, business power, lobbying, and the politics of ideas.

Gustav Mahler once said he worked as a conductor to live, but lived to compose. The great thing about academia is that I never feel forced to choose between work and life. My intellecutal and non-academic passions blur into each other and I wouldn’t be the same researcher without my other interests. Talking of which, I am passionate about music of various sorts and from different ages, play the French horn (badly), watch and talk about cinema, take photos, like to read non-academic books too, do pastry, love to learn languages, and I like to see as much of the world and learn from other people as much as possible.

In case you would like to know more, you can read about my research and published work through the top menu.