Arolda Elbasani

Bio:

Arolda Elbasani is a visiting scholar at the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, NYU. Previously, she held research and teaching fellowships at Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, Columbia University; Social Science Research Center, Berlin; European University of Tirana; and Free University, Berlin. She received her PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute, Florence. Her research interests lay at the intersection of Islamic politics, role of European enlargement, Institutional change and comparative democratization with a focus on Southeast Europe and Turkey. She is working on a series of articles and a book length project on Muslim communities’ support for democratic regimes, particularly in Albania, Turkey and Kosovo. The aim is to trace and explain development of their position towards democratization under varying institutional contexts and ideological frameworks. Another separate, though interrelated, project extends her previous PhD research on the role of European enlargement to promote democratic reforms in difficult cases of democratization in the Balkans. Her publications include among others articles at Democratization, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, Transitions, Sudosteuropa and the edited book on European Integration and Transformation in Western Balkans published with Routledge in 2013.