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With God into the new era faith and politics, region and nation in Post-Habsburg Tyrol
No full textDefence date: 29 October 2025Examining Board: Prof. Pieter M. Judson (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Glenda Sluga (European University Institute); Prof. John W. Boyer (University of Chicago); Prof. Laurence Cole (University of Salzburg)This thesis explores how Catholic conservatives, a group that enjoyed power, privilege, and influence within the Habsburg Monarchy, negotiated the collapse of the imperial order in Central Europe after 1918. More specifically, it uses the regional case of Austrian North Tyrol to trace how dominant political Catholics were challenged by imperial collapse, and forced to answer in religious, political, and social terms across the interwar years. Employing local sources that uncover the actions of diverse actors—priests and politicians, men and women associational activists, youth leaders and paramilitary men—this thesis advances arguments about post-war Catholicism, political Catholic hegemony, and the relationship between religion and other points of identification, namely region and nation, in interwar Austria. Rather than being merely a source of familiar comfort after the war, the Catholic religious sphere could be one of conflict, in which authority and hierarchy were renegotiated. Behind its thick veneer, political Catholics’ control of interwar Tyrol was quite fragile, concealing deep personal, interest based, ideological, and generational fissures. My thesis also shows that while regionalism reemerged after the war as a key political resource, Tyrolean conservatives continually stumbled over just how to reconcile their Catholic, regional affinities with increasingly assertive nationalist projects—a point of friction that contributed to radicalization within Tyrolean Catholic politics itself by the 1930s. Ultimately, by looking to interwar Austria’s “Black Provinces,” this thesis reorients our view away from familiar Vienna to overlooked processes of conservative resuscitation and conflict in the countryside. By doing so for Tyrol, a province typically characterized by its Catholic devotion and political conservatism, this thesis shows how these values were not innate, but rather required specific, intentional reinvestment to maintain their meaning, particularly in times of upheaval.Chapter 2 'Pacifying the Parish : Rebuilding Catholic Commitments in the Wake of War', Chapter 3 'Protecting Privilege: Conservative Politics for and Against Itself' and Chapter 5 'Reinforcing the Region: Reimagining German Tyrol after Empire' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article ''For everything, the local priest is a helper in adversity' : Catholic clergy and the new order in post-Habsburg Tyrol' (2024) in the journal '” European Review of History: Revue Européenne d’histoire'
Common ground, extracted ground : deliberating the green transition
No full textDefence date: 26 November 2025Examining Board: Prof. Dr. Patrizia Nanz (European University Institute); Prof. Dr. Graham Smith (University of Westminster); Prof. Dr. Nicole Curato (University of Birmingham); Prof. Dr. Stefano Guzzini (European University Institute)This thesis examines the ways in which climate justice and the green transition are currently being deliberated upon what I theorize is an "extracted ground". I argue that current deliberative institutions, in its attempt to ensure a democratic and just transition, currently function by grounding green extractivism, at the expense of what is often known in the literature as “green sacrifice zones” (Zografos and Robbins, 2020). By looking at deliberative theory through the demands for deliberative autonomy and the rejection of historical dispossession of communities most-affected by green extractivism, I provide an empirically-grounded theory for better understanding climate deliberation and the raw-material injustice it presupposes. This empirically-driven theorization is achieved by tracing the colonial complicities of democratic innovations, and then, turning to plurinational and transnational cases of deliberative governance. I first look at one of the most widespread forms of govenrnment-led governance of green extractivism through the implementation of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) in Maya-Q'eqchi' territories in Guatemala, both procedurally and structurally. I then provide an empirical analysis of deliberation during the Global Assembly (GA) at COP26, examining the mechanisms through which everyday citizens deliberated on climate justice at large, and extractivism in particular, in what is widely recognized as a groundbreaking attempt to realize transnational deliberation. Through empirical evidence, and building on insights from C.L.R. James's anti-colonial deliberative project and Tzul Tzul's decolonial theories of deliberative autonomy, I challenge deliberative democracy's hegemonic foundations of consent and inclusion. The thesis reveals how the emancipatory potential of James's vision—that "every cook can govern"—has been institutionalized so as to include so-called “colonial subjects” while systematically excluding their collective knowledge and legitimate decisionmaking authority as political subjects and subjects to historical disposession (see Cumes 2019). The thesis culminates by presenting veto power as a means to address the raw-material injustice of deliberating upon extracted ground, ultimately asking: what would climate futures look like if deliberated beyond this ‘common’ ground
Neither here nor there : responsibility for protecting trafficked migrants under European law
No full textDefence date: 28 February 2025Examining Board: Prof. Neha Jain (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Andrew Geddes (European University Institute, Co-Supervisor); Prof. Siobhán Mullally (University of Galway); Prof. Vladislava Stoyanova (Lund University)The past two decades have witnessed a proliferation of European laws on trafficking in persons, together with increasing engagement with this phenomenon in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union. These developments have helped consolidate the types of rights enjoyed by victims of this crime within the European space. At the same time, ambiguities persist in determining the conditions under which states are required to secure these rights, particularly when victims are identified in a country where they fail to satisfy the requirements for lawful residence. This challenge stems from the anti-trafficking laws themselves, which are marked throughout by a tension between promoting the wellbeing of victims and pursuing state interests in the sphere of immigration control. Against this backdrop, the thesis conducts a comprehensive analysis of the different constraints imposed on states’ immigration powers by European anti-trafficking rules and applicable human rights norms, focusing on how these shape access to protection and support for victims of this crime. The key contribution of the thesis lies in situating this analysis within a discussion of responsibility for securing the rights of trafficked migrants. Through this perspective, I develop arguments to suggest that states are precluded from exercising their powers of immigration control in a way that compromises the ability of victims to access appropriate protection and support, particularly when these rights cannot be exercised in another country. These claims, rooted in recent judicial and legislative developments at the European level, allow for a reappraisal of the complex interplay between immigration control, criminal justice, and victims’ rights in the anti-trafficking context, while also producing novel insights into ongoing protection challenges
Decoding EU disclosure regulation on retail investment products
No full textDefence date: 10 February 2025Examining Board: Prof. Mathias Siems (European University Institute, supervisor); Prof. Deirdre Curtin (European University Institute); Prof. Simon Deakin (University of Cambridge); Prof. Danny Busch (Radboud University)The European Union has adopted many disclosure laws with the aim of providing retail inves-tors with financial and sustainability-related information from those who manufacture, offer, issue and distribute investment products. Despite this considerable amount of EU legislation, the literature has yet to analyse the horizontal relationship between these EU disclosure laws in detail, leaving many foundational and often deeply complex issues underexplored. The pre-sent work thus seeks to contribute to this question through a detailed analysis of the EU disclo-sure framework on retail investment products. Its principal objective is to systematically eval-uate the framework’s legal design using leximetrics (i.e. the quantification and measurement of laws) based on a newly developed Retail Investor Disclosure Design Assessment (RIDDA) scheme. The RIDDA-scheme scores each disclosure law based on thirty-seven carefully se-lected design features. The assessment covers all disclosure laws in force on 1 December 2023, which concerns 54 laws embedded in more than 80 legal acts across securities, company, in-surance and consumer law. In support of the leximetric analysis, the historical evolution of the disclosure framework is discussed, starting with the late 1950s until 1 May 2024. A repository has been constructed for this part, which has recorded key data on 567 legislative interventions throughout this period, including the legal act responsible for the legal change and its temporal dimensions. The research concludes by identifying multiple problems with the design of the disclosure framework, in particular the lack of a holistic regulatory philosophy that systemati-cally incorporates technological advancements, and aligning compliance benchmarks with be-havioural insights. The findings of this thesis open several avenues for future academic re-search, including the ongoing work on codifying European securities law, comparative research with other jurisdictions and the intersection of artificial intelligence and disclosure regulation
Interaction of family socioeconomic status and genotype in the intergenerational transmission of educational and health inequalities
No full textDefence date: 16 May 2025Examining Board: Prof. Fabrizio Bernardi (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, former European University Institute, Supervisor) ; Prof. Juho Harkonen (European University Institute) ; Prof. Nicola Barban (University of Bologna) ; Prof Melinda Mills (University of Oxford)This thesis includes five empirical studies examining whether family socioeconomic status (SES) amplifies or compensates for genetic propensities on educational and health outcomes, as a mechanism in the intergenerational transmission of inequalities. It focuses on how genetic associations with traits like educational attainment, cognitive and noncognitive skills, externalizing behaviors, and BMI are moderated by family factors, primarily SES and parental separation, using data from the US, the Netherlands, and the UK. The first study finds that high-SES parents in the US compensate for low genetic propensity in less selective educational outcomes (e.g., high school) and enhance it in more selective ones (e.g., graduate school). The second study reports similar compensation for low genetic propensity for cognitive skills in academic tracking in the Netherlands but no interaction for educational outcomes. The third study shows that high-SES children in the US face stronger parental separation penalties due to a lack of compensatory strategies among children with low genetic propensities for education. Lastly, the fourth and fifth studies show that genetic propensities for externalizing behaviors and BMI are more strongly linked to adverse school outcomes and overweight, respectively, among low-SES individuals, highlighting the compensatory or triggering role of family SES. This dissertation makes at least three key contributions to the literature. First, it advances our understanding of how social inequalities are transmitted across generations by showing that socioeconomic environment of the family of origin moderates genetic associations. Second, it develops a more comprehensive theoretical framework for gene-environment research by integrating social stratification theories—such as the compensatory and boosting advantage models—into a field traditionally dominated by psychological models like the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis. Third, this dissertation employs a range of techniques and research designs, such as within-family or trio designs, to address the main methodological challenges currently faced in sociogenomics and gene-environment research.Chapter 2 'Integrating molecular genetic data into social stratification research' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'Compensating or boosting genetic propensities? : gene-family socioeconomic status interactions by educational outcome selectivity' (2025) in the journal 'Social science research'. Chapter 3 'The role of family SES and genetic factors in shaping educational and health outcomes' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'Interaction of family SES with children’s genetic propensity for cognitive and noncognitive skills: no evidence of the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis for educational outcomes' (2024) in the journal 'Research in social stratification and mobility
How policies shape 'fissured' workplaces : varieties of solo self-employment in the Netherlands, France, and Austria
No full textDefence date: 17 June 2025Examining Board: Prof. Anton Hemerijck (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Ellen Immergut (European University Institute); Prof. Olaf van Vliet (Leiden University); Prof. Niccolo Durazzi (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia)The ‘standard’ permanent, full-time employment relationship remains the dominant contract form across the European Union (EU). At the same time, solo self-employed work has been increasing over the past two decades in certain EU countries. Displaying rapid growth in independent work, the Netherlands has experienced a steep rise in solo self-employment, culminating in an employment share of 15% of the workforce in 2019. Similarly, since 2009 the share of independent workers in France has steadily risen. However, solo self-employment has declined or remained stagnant in other EU countries, such as Austria. This research carries out case study analysis that investigates the micro-level demographic, socio-economic, and geographic characteristics of independent workers and applies configurational analysis to map the institutional settings associated with recent rises in solo self-employment, or the lack thereof, in these three EU countries. Thereby, this doctoral thesis strives to advance a more holistic understanding of the welfare state and labour market institutional incentives for solo self-employment growth and, ultimately, varieties of solo self-employment in the EU. Within each case study of the Netherlands, France, and Austria, firstly, using national survey and administrative micro-data, this research assesses the workforce characteristics of independent workers over time, as well as how these could relate to the overall institutionallevel incentive structure. Secondly, based on LABREF and MISSOC databases, it assesses the level and traces the development of select welfare state and labour market policy institutional factors over the past 20 years, guided by a developed framework of how these could be expected to shape cost-related incentives for independent work. These include differentials to (semi-) dependent employment in terms of overall social security contributions due – with a focus on unemployment and sickness insurance contributions specifically – and employment protection regulation, as well the regulatory environments for combatting ‘bogus’ self-employment and business-friendly and active labour market policies for own-account work. Thirdly, the through configurational analysis identified overall cumulative institutional settings for each case study are analysed for their contributions towards ‘dualisation’ and Thelen’s (2014) ‘varieties of liberalisation’ theory
Governing the economy in the digital age : globalisation, the state, and Eastern Europe's comparative advantage in information technology
No full textDefence date: 18 June 2025Examining Board: Prof. Dorothee Bohle (University of Vienna, supervisor); Prof. Anton Hemerijck (European University Institute); Prof. Cornel Ban (Copenhagen Business School); Prof. Herman Mark Schwartz (University of Virginia)In a matter of a few decades, computers have evolved from clunky vacuum-tube machines to lean general-purpose devices powered by integrated circuits. Their very existence has produced a variety of new opportunities for economic specialisation and positioning within global value chains, but also challenges and traps to late developing countries. Although these changes are global in scope, individual countries have navigated them differently. Some have developed a comparative advantage in high-tech ICT industries such as software, and others have fallen behind. To explain such cross-country differences, this thesis advances two central arguments. Firstly, comparative advantage in digital sectors is embedded in man-made institutions which mediate societal and entrepreneurial response to technological change. A country’s position in global digital markets is neither predetermined by the functional characteristics of technology, nor is it the spontaneous aggregate outcome of decentralised individual efforts. Rather, it depends on governmental effort to disseminate technological achievements broadly, and to elicit entrepreneurial behaviour. Secondly, such institutions are devised at critical historical junctures and thus remain subject to long-run processes of inherited cumulative advantage. Early policy decisions may trigger self-augmenting processes of human capital creation that outlast their creators even beyond dramatic societal ruptures. These two arguments are substantiated empirically by tracking the different trajectories of the computer electronics and software industries in several Southeastern European nations across multiple decades – Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia. Methodologically, the dissertation is based on comparative historical analysis and draws on a wide range of qualitative and quantitative sources ranging from archives and semi-structured interviews to macroeconomic and self-collected firm-level data. As such, it contributes to political economy scholarship seeking to understand the dynamics of belated development in semi-peripheral countries, as well as to theoretical perspectives accounting for the relationship between technology and policy-making
The spirit of the land : race, autochthony, and character in Spanish regenerationist thought
No full textDefence date: 12 November 2025Examining Board: Prof. Lucy Riall (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. M’hamed Oualdi (European University Institute); Prof. Jean-Frédéric Schaub (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales); Prof. Carolina García Sanz (Universidad de Sevilla)After the Battle of Sedan, the notion of the decadence of the ‘Latin race,’ which had been publicised during the Second French Empire, became a transnational myth with long-lasting echoes. This idea influenced the fin-de-siècle culture and politics, spawning many local iterations and serving to interpret the nation through an increasingly racialist lens. In Spain, during the Bourbon Restoration (1874-1931), the motif of Latin decadence became intertwined with a deep sense of national crisis, epitomised by the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the subsequent loss of the country’s remaining overseas dominions. Against this backdrop, the Spanish turn of the century coincided with the emergence of a political-intellectual movement known as ‘regenerationism’ and a related literary phenomenon usually referred to as ‘the Generation of ’98.’ The movement’s main figures produced a body of essays that aimed to address Spain’s ailments and find paths towards modernisation and ‘Europeanisation.’ While regenerationist literature is widely known for its attacks on local caciques and other political issues, it consists first and foremost of an examination of Spain’s past and a reflection on the nation’s essential ‘deep being.’ In their various interpretations of Spanish history, regenerationists often explained national decadence in terms of problems affecting the ‘Spanish race,’ which is the focus of this dissertation. One of my main findings is that, rather than reproducing Latinist tropes, a variety of alternative racial affiliations were used to avoid the narrative of inevitable collective decline. Furthermore, the regeneration of the ‘Spanish race’ was considered to be more about the retrieval and strengthening of the national character than about biological eugenics. My central argument is that autochthony — a deep-rooted original bond between people and territory — is the cornerstone of regenerationist racial thought, both in terms of ethnicity and the simultaneous, mutually dependent efforts to revive race and land.Chapter 8 'The doctor of Cestona' and Chapter 9 'Rival trees' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as chapter 'El doctor de Cestona: antropología racial y criminología en los tipos novelescos de Pío Baroja' (2024) in the book 'Miradas al pasado, miradas al presente : nuevos horizontes de la historiografía contemporánea : actas del XVI Congreso de la Asociación de Historia Contemporánea'
Belgian capitalism and the finance-industry nexus during the first global economy (1850-1914)
No full textDefence date: 18 December 2025Examining Board: Prof. Glenda Sluga (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Alexia Yates (European University Institute); Prof. Daniela Gabor (School of Oriental and African Studies); Prof. Oscar Gelderblom (University of Antwerp)This thesis explores the trajectory of Belgian capitalism and its finance-industry nexus during the first global economy (1850-1914). I trace a shift in finance’s services from financing through shares and bonds during the early industrialisation period (1830-1870) to financing through short-term credit via current accounts (1870-1914). I use Belgian banks’ balance sheets, investment portfolios, stock market data, and sources on current accounts to map this shift in ties between domestic finance and industry. I contextualise these shifts in the Belgian finance-industry nexus within the development of the first global economy. I argue that globalisation created a new terrain of action for both industry and finance, which altered their entanglement. In doing so, I bring a new perspective to an often-invoked idea in Belgian historiography, which I label the notion of a persistently strong finance-industry nexus. This notion posits that the relationship between domestic finance and industry did not fundamentally change during the first global economy. In this thesis, I reexamine this idea through the lens of globalisation. The globalisation of Belgian capitalism is further explored in a comparative framework with Britain and Germany, providing an instructive view onto the particular trajectory of Belgian finance and industry. I study the financial and industrial development of the three countries by comparing industrial growth and trade patterns, the relative importance of capital export, and its destinations. This approach locates Belgian industrial and financial growth between two different trajectories: Britain’s role as the global market’s central financier, and Germany’s experience as an industrialising ‘catch-up’ nation. I depict Belgian finance as growing mostly through increasing global entanglements, while domestic industry specialised in response to the competitive pressures of globalisation. Finally, I zoom in to examine diversification internal to the Belgian case-study through a regional comparison of the different trajectories of finance in merchant Antwerp and industrial Brussels over this same period. Additionally, I explore the changing role of finance in its relationship to the (colonial) state. These complementary analyses illuminate important differences in the ties of finance to their (local) clients, concluding that finance’s trajectory depends largely on the needs of its clients
Everyday fascism : strategies of conquest and rule in provincial Italy and Spain
No full textDefence date: 06 November 2025Examining Board: Prof. Lucy Riall (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Pieter M. Judson (European University Institute, Second Reader); Prof. Kate Ferris (University of St. Andrews); Prof. Marco Bresciani (Università di Firenze)This is a study of early fascist strategies of conquest and rule in provincial areas of Italy and Spain, and of how ordinary citizens interacted with and responded to these developments. Studying fascist practices in the local space including violence, governance, repression, mythmaking, and empire remembrance, the thesis brings together two case studies from distinct geographical spaces and time periods to show the connections between ordinary experiences of life under dictatorship in unique, rural settings. To reveal these everyday life experiences in the context of provincial fascism, the thesis draws on a range of material from municipal archives, private collections, state archives, and libraries from across the two provinces. The first part of the thesis focuses on the province of Arezzo, Tuscany from 1920 – 1926. It first investigates the violent conquest of the province by fascist paramilitary organisations and the impact of this on traditional community structures, before reducing the scale of analysis to uncover patterns of life under fascist rule in the municipality of Civitella della Chiana. Chapter 2 looks at politics in the local government, demonstrating that at the early stage, Italian Fascism was often superseded by local loyalties and animosities. Chapter 3 uncovers examples of fascist spectacle in the local space, setting the perspective of the local authorities against the ordinary citizens called on to participate and revealing the interactions between both parties. The sources demonstrate that by underestimating the importance of the personal and the local, provincial fascist organisations often struggled in their mission to dominate the physical and rhetorical spaces of the province. The second part of the thesis moves the analysis to the province of Caceres, Extremadura, from 1933- 1945. The first chapter in this section covers the rise of the far Right in the province and argues that disparate right-wing groups merged into a coherent Fascist culture and movement. Following this, Chapter 5 reduces the scale to the municipality of Trujillo, where it studies the repressive policies of hunger management and the policing of morality employed by the falangist municipality to punish the ‘losers’ of the Civil War and to control the general population. Chapter 6 widens the scale of analysis again to study the Francoist persecution of Freemasons in the province and the culture of denunciation that this practice generated, before Chapter 7 zooms back in on the theme of fascist empire remembrance in Trujillo which was centred around the fascistized myth of the conquistador Francisco Pizarro.Chapter 1 'Rethinking Campanilismo: Community and Conflict in Fascist Arezzo, 1922-1928' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'Rethinking 'campanilismo' : community and conflict in fascist Arezzo, 1922–1928' (2025) in the journal 'Contemporary European history'