International Forum for Democratic Studies Research Council Member

Jan Zielonka

Oxford University

Jan Zielonka is professor of European Politics at the University of Oxford and is the Ralf Dahrendorf Professorial Fellow at St. Antony’s College. He is also a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He has published numerous works in the field of international relations, comparative politics and the history of political ideas. His current work analyzes the politics of European integration and disintegration.

He is the principal investigator of a large international project on the topic of the relationship between the media and democracy in Europe, sponsored by the European Research Council. His books include Europe as Empire. The Nature of the Enlarged European Union, (Oxford University Press, 2006), Europe Unbound: Enlarging and Reshaping the Boundaries of the European Union, (Routledge 2002), Democratic Consolidation in Eastern Europe, vol. 1 & 2 (Oxford University Press, 2001), Explaining Euro-paralysis. Why Europe is Unable to Act in International Politics (Macmillan, 1998), and Political Ideas in Contemporary Poland (Avebury 1989). Prof. Zielonka studied law at the University of Wroclaw, Poland, and political science at the University of Warsaw, where he received his Ph.D. in 1981. In 1982 he settled in the Netherlands, first at the University of Groningen and then, at the University of Leiden from 1984 onward. In January 1996, he was appointed professor of Political Science at the European University Institute in Florence and was Joint Chair in European Studies at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies and the Department of Political and Social Sciences. He took up his present position at the University of Oxford in January 2004.