Principal Investigators

Prof. Dr. Jens Steffek
(TU Darmstadt/Speaker)
Prof. Dr. Sandra Seubert
(Goethe University/Deputy Speaker)
Prof. Dr. Nathalie Behnke
Political Science (TU Darmstadt)
Prof. Dr. Barbara Brandl
Sociology (Goethe University)
Prof. Dr. Alexander Ebner
Sociology (Goethe University)
Prof. Dr. Petra Gehring
Philosophy (TU Darmstadt)
Prof. Dr. Dirk Jörke
Political Science (TU Darmstadt)
Prof. Dr. Markus Lederer
Political Science (TU Darmstadt)
Prof. Dr. Andreas Nölke
Political Science (Goethe University)
Prof. Dr. Ute Sacksofsky
Law (Goethe University)

Fellows

Timo Richter
(Managing Director)
Dr. Julia Drubel
(Scientific coordination)
Vladyslav Andrushko
Doctoral Researcher / Cohort 1
Miriam Bickelhaupt
Doctoral researcher / Cohort 1
Eda Bülbül
Doctoral Researcher / Cohort 1
Setaiesh Ghafari
Doctoral Researcher / Cohort 1
Lena Gigerl
Doctoral Researcher / Cohort 1
David Hengsbach
Doctoral Researcher / Cohort 1
Sebastian Jaschke
Doctoral Researcher / Cohort 1
Robin Jaspert
Doctoral Researcher / Cohort 1
Stefan Andreas Meyer
Doctoral Researcher / Cohort 1
Lea Maria Radke
Doctoral Researcher / Cohort 1
Charles Paul Louis Thiebaud
Doctoral Researcher / Cohort 1

Associates

Nadine Benedix
Loic Fondjo
Moritz Fromm
Miranda Loli
Dr. Filippo Reale
Dr. Michael Schedelik

Mercator Fellows

Professor Brett Bowden
Brett Bowden is Professor of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry in the School of Humanities & Communication Arts at the University of Western Sydney. He is a multi-award-winning author and has previously held appointments at the University of Queensland, The Australian National University, and the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy. He has held visiting positions in the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster in London, and in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research at Bielefeld University in Germany. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK) and an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales. He is a recipient of a Distinguished Alumni Award from Flinders University. He has previously served the School as Associate Dean of Research and as Associate Dean, International. He has served as the University's Chair and as Deputy Chair of the Human Research Ethics Committee.
Biography
B.Bowden@westernsydney.edu.au
Professor Maryam Zarnegar Deloffre
Maryam Zarnegar Deloffre is Associate Professor of International Affairs and Director of the Humanitarian Action Initiative at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. She is also an Associate Senior Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation, University Duisburg-Essen, Germany. Her research and publications examine accountability and standard-setting in the humanitarian sector, non-governmental organization (NGO) accountability and legitimacy; NGO interactions; and global governance. Deloffre’s most relevant recent publications examine imaginaries of aid (“Sphere” 2022); develop relational approaches to understanding the dynamics of global governance (ISR 2021 and 2022; book manuscript under review); and investigate processes of de-centering the global in humanitarian governance. She currently serves on the board of the International Humanitarian Studies Association, on the International Studies Association Committee on the Status of Women, and on the editorial board of Global Studies Quarterly. Deloffre earned a B.A. in political science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a M.A. in International Relations from the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris-Fondation Nationale de Sciences Politiques (Sciences Po), and a Ph.D. in Political Science from The George Washington University.
Biography
Professor Marie-Pierre F. Granger
Marie-Pierre Granger is Associate Professor (resident faculty) with a joint appointment between the Department of Public Policy and the Department of Legal Studies. She is the Academic Director of the Mundus MAPP Program and its consortium's academic coordinator. She received her Ph.D. in European Law from the University of Exeter (United Kingdom, 2001) after studying political sciences, public administration and law at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques of Lyon (France), Jean Moulin University- Lyon III (France), Aristotle University (Greece) and Montpellier I University (France). From 2001 to 2004, she held a lectureship position at the School of Law of the University of Exeter. Marie-Pierre currently teaches courses on European integration and governance, EU law, EU human rights law and policy, and Law and Public Policy. From 2005 until 2012, Marie-Pierre co-directed, together with Imola Streho (Sciences-Po Paris), the annual summer course on Advanced EU Legal Practice, taught by the Total Law Team (led by J. Weiler, NYU). Between 2006 and 2019, she was the CEU academic coordinator for the Allianz Summer Academy on Europe. Marie-Pierre’s research interests lie in the fields of European Union Law; European integration and governance; comparative public law; access to justice; judicial processes and remedies; human rights; social justice, climate change and citizenship. She is particularly interested in understanding the political and social dynamics which underlie legal frameworks and their transformation. Her articles appear in the European Law Review, European Public Law, the Modern Law Review, Comparative European Politics, etc. She has contributed numerous book chapters in edited volumes and research handbooks, published by Oxford University Press, Hart, Bruylant, Edward Elgar, or Kluwer. She acted as Executive Board member and work package coordinatory in EU funded collaborative research projects on barriers to EU citizenship (bEUcitizen 2014-2017) and Justice for Europe (ETHOS 2017-2019). She co-edited (with PJ Cardwell) The Research Handbooks on the Politics of EU Law (Edward Elgar, 2020), (with E Guinchard) The New EU Judiciary - An analysis of current judicial reform (Kluwerlaw International, 2017) and (with S de Vries and H de Waele) Civil Rights and EU Citizenship: Challenges at the Crossroads of European, National and Private Spheres (Edward Elgar, 2018). She advises governments, NGOs and funders in her area of expertise, and collaborates as an external expert with various funding organizations and public consultancy firms. Marie-Pierre is a member of the CEU Works Council, the CEU Equal Opportunity Committee, the Ethical Research Committee and the CEU Library Committee.
Biography
Professor Jean-Christophe Graz
Jean-Christophe Graz is Professor of international relations at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques (IEP) of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, co-founder of the Centre of International History and Political Studies of Globalization (CRHIM), and Vice-Dean for research, ethics and doctoral schools at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences. He has worked for the last twenty years on regulation issues in global political economy. His research focuses on transnational private governance, international standards, service offshoring, and more recently on labour and sustainability standards, risk and uncertainty, and platform capitalism. His most recent book is The Power of Standards: Hybrid authority and the Globalisation of Services (Cambridge University Press, 2019 – Open Access), for which he received the Joan Robinson Prize for the best monograph from the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE).
Biography
Professor Aarti Gupta
Aarti Gupta is a Professor of Global Environmental Governance at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, with a background in international relations and political science. Her research focuses on questions of transparency and accountability in climate and sustainability governance, as well as the challenges of anticipatory governance of novel potentially risky technologies, such as modern biotechnology and climate engineering. She has published widely on these topics, including the co-edited volume Transparency in Global Environmental Governance: Critical perspectives (MIT Press). She is currently principal investigator of a 5-year project TRANSGOV that assesses the ‘Transformative Potential of Transparency in Climate Governance’ (https://trans-gov.org/). Since 2022, she has also been the co-chair of the Scientific Steering Committee of the international Earth System Governance (ESG) research alliance, and was a Coordinating Lead Author of its 2018 Science and Implementation Plan. She is also co-editor of the Cambridge Elements Series on Earth System Governance. In addition to academic pursuits, Aarti has worked for Oxfam Novib in The Hague and Transparency International in Berlin, as well as being a consultant for UNDP, FAO and GIZ. She holds a PhD from Yale University in environmental studies.
Biography
Professor Dimitry Vladimirovich Kochenov
Professor Dimitry Vladimirovich Kochenov (LEGS '02) leads the Rule of Law Workgroup at CEU Democracy Institute and teaches at the Department of Legal Studies. This year he has been awarded a EUR 1M grant from Stiftung Mercator to establish Clinical Rule of Law work in Budapest, wihch is his main on-going project. Prof. Kochenov's research focuses on the principles of law in the global context, with a special emphasis on the Rule of Law, citizenship, and the enforcement of EU values. Outside of CEU Dimitry is Visiting Professor at LUISS Guido Carli in Rome (Faculty of Law). In the last semester he was also an Associate of the EU Programme at Princeton University in New Jersey.
Biography
Professor Amy A. Quark
Amy A. Quark is a Professor of Sociology and International Relations at William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA. Her research focuses on governance standards and the standardization of governance in the context of intensifying hegemonic rivalries, inter-firm competition, and social protest. She has published an award-winning book, Global Rivalries: Standards Wars and the Transnational Cotton Trade (University of Chicago, 2013), and numerous articles published in a range of journals, including Social Problems, Politics & Society, and Review of International Political Economy. Her recent work also includes community-engaged research collaborations focused on U.S. military expansion and Black land loss in Virginia.
Biography
Professor Joel Quirk
Joel Quirk is Professor of Politics at the University of the Witwatersrand. His work focuses on enslavement and abolition, humanitarianism and imperialism, the politics of numbers, migration governance, social movements and contentious politics, gender and violence, and the history and politics of Africa. Joel is the author or co-editor of eight books. His most recent work is Research as more than extraction? Knowledge production and gender-based violence in African societies (Ohio, 2023, edited with Annie Bunting and Allen Kiconco). Joel has also co-edited special issues of Social & Legal Studies, Review of International Studies, The Anti-Trafficking Review, and Slavery & Abolition. He is a founding editor of openDemocracy’s Beyond Trafficking and Slavery.
Biography

Student assistants

Johanna Brunsing
Romy Knappe
Jonathan Mück