Chair holder: Prof. Dr. Marianne Kneuer

Marianne Kneuer is Full Professor of Comparative Politics and Director of the Institute of Political Science at the Dresden University of Technology since October 2021. Previously, she was Full Professor of Comparative Politics and International Relations at the University of Hildesheim (2011-2021), where she also had the position of Director of the Institute of Social Sciences between 2012 and 2019. In 2018, she co-founded the Center for Digital Change at the University of Hildesheim and served as its Board Member. Marianne Kneuer performed various professional activities: From 1990 to 1994, Marianne Kneuer worked as a political journalist (within others at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), and from 1994 to 1999 she was member of the planning staff and speech writer of Federal President Roman Herzog. Professor Kneuer was President of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) from 2018 to 2021 and continues to be active as Past President and member of the Executive Committee of IPSA (2021-2023). Previously, she had served as member of the Executive Committee of IPSA (2014-2018), from 2016 to 2018 as First Vice President. Since, 2020, Professor Kneuer is Chairwomen of the Board of GESIS, Leibniz Institute of Social Sciences. Moreover, she serves on several boards of scientific organizations. She is co-founder and co-editor of the German Journal of Comparative Studies and of several book series.

Kneuer’s research covers democracy and autocracy studies, focusing on regime change and democratic erosion, external factors (promotion and diffusion) of democratization and autocratization, and foreign policy of autocratic regimes as well as legitimation strategies of autocracies. Another strand of her research deals with digitalization, especially with digital communication and net politics. This research explores the impact of digitalization on political processes and connects to her interest in cross-regime comparison as she looks at democracies, autocracies and intermediate regime types. Kneuer also investigates discourses in digital media and uses methods of discourse analysis. Her area expertise covers Southern Europe, Central Eastern Europe and Latin America. She publishes inter alia in Democratization, Third World Quaterly, IPSR, Media and Communication, Bulletin of Latin American Research, and European Journal of Social Theory. Her latest book, Authoritarian Gravity Centers (with Thomas Demmelhuber), was published in 2020 by Routledge.