About

I am a political scientist specializing in the study of international politics, European integration, and foreign policy. My research investigates how the European Union’s foreign and security policy is shaped by the dynamic interplay between external geopolitical pressures and internal political contestation within member states.

I am part of a small group of scholars advancing qualitative Bayesian reasoning (QBR) for inference to the best explanation in political science.

My research agenda is structured around two interrelated strands. The first adopts an outside-in perspective, examining how great power competition—in particular among the United States, China, and Russia—reconfigures the strategic environment in which the EU operates. I seek to develop a comprehensive theoretical framework that explains how such systemic pressures influence both the pace and form of European integration in the foreign and security domain.

The second strand takes an inside-out perspective, focusing on the domestic politics of foreign policy, with a particular emphasis on how partisan and ideological cleavages shape the foreign policy orientations of democratic states and constrain collective EU action. In this work, I explore how political parties and ideological coalitions contest the direction and scope of the EU’s external engagements, contributing to the growing literature on the politicization and fragmentation of European foreign policy.
Methodologically, I combine qualitative Bayesian reasoning with comparative case study design and process tracing to generate inferences to the best explanation in complex, multi-level settings. I also employ elite survey experiments for causal inference on foreign policy topics.

My empirical work focuses on critical episodes in EU foreign and security policy—such as responses to Russian aggression, debates over strategic autonomy, and engagement with China—as well as the domestic political processes that shape national foreign policy preferences and their aggregation at the EU level.

By bridging the external and internal dimensions of EU foreign policy, my research aims to offer a theoretically rigorous and empirically grounded account of how the EU navigates a rapidly evolving geopolitical landscape while managing growing internal political fragmentation. My work contributes to scholarly debates in international relations, European studies, and foreign policy analysis, and offers insights relevant to practitioners and policymakers confronting the EU’s strategic dilemmas.