Katarzyna Jezierska

Research

My PhD thesis (2011) was written in the field of democratic theory and compared two contemporary thinkers, Chantal Mouffe and Jürgen Habermas. I contrasted their writings about politics and political subjectivity in an ambition to carve out a third position on radical democracy that moved beyond both Mouffe and Habermas.

In my postdoc project (The Swedish Research Council’s international postdoc 2012-2016) I studied civil society and democracy in Central Europe, trying to understand how civil society actors engage in or are drawn into formal politics.

I am currently working on three projects. One is about the intersection of diplomacy and civil society (The Swedish Research Council, 2019-2022). Together with Ann Towns we focus on how these two actors interact and how formal foreign policy is implemented and adapted in contexts where norms collide. Empirically we study the Swedish Feminist Foreign Policy in Central Europe. More on this project can be found at https://gendip.gu.se/

In the second project, together with Adrienne Sörbom and Andrea Krizsán (funded by The Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies, 2020-2023), we focus on policy advice in illiberal contexts, exploring what role think tanks (a special type of civil society actor) play in such countries.

My most recent project (funded by The Swedish Research Council, 2022-2024) focuses on knowledge production and advocacy in the international arena, with a special interest in how civil society organizations influence the orientation and content of anti-gender and feminist foreign policy.

During 2022, I am working with Ann Towns, Elin Bjarnegård, and Kristen Kao on a report commissioned by The Expert Group for Aid Studies. We evaluate the methods of implementation of the Swedish Feminist Foreign Policy in partner countries.

Teaching

I teach and supervise at the IPPE program.

Keywords

Democratic theory, civil society, think tanks, policy advice, illiberal regimes, diplomacy, foreign policy