Appointment: Tina Freyburg

1 August 2015. Tina Margarete Freyburg was born in Stuttgart on 15 November 1979 and is a German national.

She studied political science at the Universities of Mannheim and Heidelberg and obtained her Master’s degree in political science with minors in psychology and media and communication studies. Subsequently, she started her doctoral studies at ETH Zurich. The title of her doctoral thesis is "Transnational influences and democratic socialization in authoritarian contexts". This work was awarded the prize of the Swiss Institute of International Studies for the best doctoral thesis in social sciences.

Stages in Florence, Bonn, Zurich and Warwick

After obtaining her Doctor’s degree in 2011, Tina Freyburg first moved to the European University Institute, where she worked as a Max Weber Fellow. After a shortish study visit to the German Development Institute in Bonn, she went to England, where she conducted research and taught at the University of Warwick for three years, first as a PostDoc with a scholarship from the Leverhulme Trust (2011/2), then as an Assistant Professor (2012/3) and finally as an Associate Professor (2013/4). In Warwick, Tina Freyburg also headed the Centre for Studies in Democratisation and was in charge of the introduction of a methodology-oriented Bachelor’s and Master’s programme in the context of the Q-Step initiative.

During her stays abroad, Tina Freyburg always retained her bonds with the Swiss university landscape. Thus she taught European Politics at the University of Berne and remained at ETH Zurich as an associated researcher.

Research focus: democratisation in times of increasing interlinkage

Prof. Dr. Tina Freyburg pursues an innovative research programme, which is located at the interface of comparative, international and European politics. Her research focuses on democracy and democratisation, particularly on the analysis of the impact of transnational networks on democratisation processes, primarily in the context of relations between the European Union and the Arab nations of the Middle East and North Africa, but also the democratic quality of these networks themselves.

She has published articles in important German- and English-language journals and has been awarded international research prizes, for instance by the International Studies Association, the European Union Studies Association and the European Consortium for Political Research.

Prof. Dr. Tina Freyburg is part of a very good international network and is actively involved in national and international debates about political science.

Courses in comparative politics

Tina Freyburg has teaching experience in the core field of comparative politics. In future, she will teach courses in the field of comparative politics at all Levels both in German and English. In addition, she will offer courses in quantitative and qualitative data analysis.

In formal terms, Prof. Dr. Tina Freyburg succeeds Prof. Daniele Caramani, Ph.D., who left the HSG after summer 2014.