Biography
Marianne Kneuer joined the TU Dresden in October 2021 as Full Professor of Comparative Politics. 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 had co-founded the Center for Digital Change at the University of Hildesheim and served as its Board Member. She was/is research fellow, e.g. at GIGA, Hamburg, and Arizona State University, USA. Between 2005 and 2011, Marianne Kneuer substituted chairs of Comparative Politics at the Universities of Erfurt, Darmstadt and Hagen. After obtaining her doctorate at the University of Bonn in 1991 and before returning to academia, 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 speechwriter of Federal President Roman Herzog.
Professor Kneuer serves in multiple positions in associations: She 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. On the national level, within other positions, Professor Kneuer had been board member of the German Society of Political Science and from 2011 to 2013 President of this association. She also served as co-speaker of the Working Group on Democracy Studies of the German Political Science Association (2004-2018). Since, 2020, Professor Kneuer is Chairwomen 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 Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft 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. More recently, she conducts and collaborates in two research consortiums on solidarity in crisis contexts: SOLDISK analyses solidarity during the German migration crisis, and SAFE-19 examines solidarity during the COVID-19 pandemic. She publishes inter alia in Democratization, Third World Quarterly, 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.
Professor Kneuer is regularly called upon as a guest speaker, consultant and media pundit. She collaborates in evaluation panels or as reviewer of democracy indices.
