Sonja Grimm - EDP Network

Sonja Grimm

EDP Network Member

Prof. Dr. Sonja Grimm serves as Chair of International Relations and European Studies at the Institute of Political Science and Sociology at the University of Würzburg. Sonja is also currently the Scientific Lead and Co-Coordinator of EMBRACE, a collaborative research consortium funded by the European Commission.

Sonja specialized in democratization studies, the study of state-building and transition to democracy in post-conflict societies and fragile states, international democracy promotion, development cooperation and EU integration. Her research focuses on the causes and consequences of violent conflict, state fragility, and the politics of international state-building and externally overseen democratization. Her cumulative habilitation focuses on “Studies of International Democracy Promotion in Post-conflict Societies and Fragile States”. Sonja has been a visiting researcher and guest lecturer at the Universities of Gothenburg, New Caledonia, Nottingham, Oxford, and Prague.

Before coming to Würzburg, Sonja was an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Konstanz (Germany), where she successfully defended her habilitation thesis in 2018. Prior to that, she was a researcher at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) in the research unit “Democracy and Democratization” and taught at the Humboldt University in Berlin. She received her doctoral degree from the Institute of Social Sciences at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Her dissertation, “Erzwungene Demokratie. Politische Neuordnung unter externer Aufsicht in Nachkriegsgesellschaften” [Imposed Democracy: Political New Order under External Oversight in Post-War Societies] focuses on the role of external actors in the building up of democratic institutions after a civil war and military intervention. Before working on her dissertation, from 1998 to 2004 Sonja studied political science, history, and art history at the Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg and at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques, Science Po, Paris.

More about Sonja Grimm here.

Contact: sonja.grimm [at] external-democracy-promotion.eu