Natasha Wunsch
Prof
natasha.wunsch@unifr.ch
+41 26 300 7762
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8715-1335
European Integration; EU enlargement; Euroscepticism
Democratisation; democracy promotion; democratic backsliding
Professor
Department of European Studies and Slavic Studies
Bd de Pérolles 90
1700 Fribourg
Biography
Natasha Wunsch joined the University of Fribourg in 2023 as Professor of European Studies as well as co-director of the Centre for European Studies and head of the MA in European Studies. Previously, she was Assistant Professor of Political Science/European Integration at Sciences Po Paris, Senior Researcher at ETH Zurich and Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and the University of Oxford. She is currently Chair of the ECPR Standing Group on the European Union.
Natasha Wunsch received her PhD from University College London in 2016 and defended her habilitation at ETH Zurich in 2023. Previously, she completed a dual Master’s degree in European Studies and Political Science at Sciences Po Paris and the Free University of Berlin. In addition to her academic activities, she sits on the Academic Advisory Committee of the German Council on Foreign Relations and on the Academic Advisory Board of the Institute for European Politics. She is also a member of the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group.
Her research interests lie at the interface between European and comparative politics. She studies processes of democracy promotion as well as democratic regression primarily in the post-communist space and is interested in the implications of current challenges to liberal democracy for European cooperation and the process of European integration. Her research has been published in the Journal of European Public Policy, the Journal of Common Market Studies and Democratization, among others. In a research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Ambizione), she is currently investigating the role of citizens’ democratic attitudes in processes of democratic erosion.
Research and publications
- Journal articles
Wunsch, Natasha & Philippe Blanchard (2023). Patterns of democratic backsliding in third-wave democracies: a sequence analysis perspective, Democratization 30(2): 278-301.Chiru, Mihail and Natasha Wunsch (2023): Democratic backsliding as a catalyst for polity-based contestation? Populist radical right cooperation in the European Parliament, Journal of European Public Policy 30(1): 64-83.Wunsch, Natasha & Nicole Olszewska (2022). From projection to introspection: enlargement discourses since the ‘big bang’ accession, Journal of European Integration 44(7): 919–939.Bélanger, Marie-Eve & Natasha Wunsch (2022). From cohesion to contagion? Populist radical right contestation of EU enlargement, Journal of Common Market Studies 60(3): 653-672.Richter, Solveig and Natasha Wunsch (2020): Money, Power, Glory: Linkages between EU conditionality and state capture in the Western Balkans, Journal of European Public Policy 27(1): 41-62.Wunsch, Natasha (2019): Transnational learning and civil society empowerment in the EU enlargement process, Journal of Common Market Studies 57(2): 406-423.Fagan, Adam and Natasha Wunsch (2019): Fostering institutionalisation? The impact of the EU accession process on state-civil society relations in Serbia, Acta Politica 54(4): 607-624.Wunsch, Natasha (2017): Between indifference and hesitation: France and EU enlargement towards the Balkans, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 17(4): 541-554.Wunsch, Natasha (2016): Coming full circle? Differential empowerment in Croatia’s EU accession process, Journal of European Public Policy, 23(8): 1199-1217.Wunsch, Natasha (2015): Beyond instrumentalisation: NGO monitoring coalitions in Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia, East European Politics, 31(4): 452-467.Wunsch, Natasha (2015): Tracing processes of empowerment: civil society in EU accession, SAGE Research Methods Cases.Töglhofer, Theresia and Natasha Wunsch (2011): EU-Erweiterungspolitik auf dem Westlichen Balkan: Zwischen Stabilisierung und Integration, Sicherheit + Frieden, 7(3): 141-148.Töglhofer, Theresia and Natasha Wunsch (2010): Stabilisation et association dans les Balkans occidentaux: les défis du double objectif européen, Balkanologie, 12(1).