Welcome to my personal homepage.
I am an Assistant Professor in European Union Studies at Leiden University.
I received my PhD from the University of Cologne in December 2012 and worked there for a number of years as a lecturer in European Union politics. I spent two years as post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for European Research (CERGU) in Gothenburg, Sweden, before joining the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science at Freie Universität Berlin, first as a post-doctoral researcher as part of the Soft Law Research Network (SoLaR), later as a member of the Center for European Integration. I joined the European Union Studies team in Leiden in September 2023.
My primary research interest is the role of courts in political processes and judicial procedures as a mode of solving political conflicts. In the past, this interest has mainly focussed on the European Court of Justice, the highest court of the European Union. In my doctoral research I have studied in particular how the European Commission can achieve policy goals through litigation that it could not achieve through legislation. You can download my dissertation here.
My current research centres mostly around the use of litigation by interest groups and private companies. Here, I am interested in two questions. First: What makes some interest groups or companies more likely to go to court than others? And second: Are court proceedings a sensible way to solve conflicts, and how do they relate to other modes of conflict resolution?
My teaching has covered many aspects of European Union politics, with a special emphasis on EU law, environmental policy, fundamental rights, lobbying and interest group representation, and the political economy of market integration and the eurozone.