Karolina Pomorska is a Jean Monnet Chair and Associate Professor in International Relations at Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science. She is also an Affiliated Research Fellow of the European Centre at the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at University of Cambridge.

Before coming to Leiden in 2017, Karolina worked at Maastricht University and University of Cambridge (2012-2014). She also held visiting or associate positions at Pembroke College and Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge, at the Centre for Transatlantic Relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC and at the Centre for International Studies in Warsaw. She frequently engages with a wide range of audiences and delivers trainings to diplomats and officials.

In her current research, Karolina focuses on the European Union’s foreign policy and the dynamics of international negotiations. She studies the behavioural norms in the Council of the EU and the processes of contestation and norm erosion. She has led a project on the European External Action Service and socialization of its diplomats.

Karolina also studies the roles and attitudes of officials in the Council Secretariat General of the European Union and the role of nationally seconded diplomats. Among her research interests are also topics such as: informal aspects of policy-making and negotiations, Polish foreign policy and the role of trust in crisis. She has co-edited a book on the tensions between values and security in Europe’s neighbourhood (with Manchester University Press) and a Special Issue of the Hague Journal of Diplomacy on the emerging system of European diplomacy.

Karolina’s work was published in journals such as the Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS), Journal of European Public Policy (JEPP), Journal of European Integration (JEI), Comparative European Politics, East European Politics ;or Europe-Asia Studies. She has been a regular contributor to the Annual Review of the Journal of Common Market Studies, where she has been writing about the role of the EU in the world and in its neighbourhood.

See Karolina Pomorska’s full academic profile on the University of Leiden’s website.

The core module of the European Politics and External Relations MSc programme provides students with a thorough understanding of the politics and power of Europe in an increasingly diverse, interdependent, and multi-polar world. It examines in depth the internal and external dimensions of European politics and their interrelations. Internally, it focuses on the dynamics of the European Union as an evolving polity and governance system, together with their implications for member states, citizens, and the wider world. Externally, it focuses on understanding and analysing the position of Europe in a changing global environment.

This course takes an inside-out approach to the study of the EU’s relations with, policies towards, and relevance for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The latter is conceived broadly to include those countries in the region that are already EU member states (Visegrad Group, the Baltic states, Croatia and Slovenia), the six accession states in the Western Balkans, and the six neighbourhood countries of the Eastern Partnership. Once all members of the ‘communist camp’, these countries have followed distinct trajectories over the past 30 years and constitute an extremely diverse cohort. The inside-out approach of the course rests in reversing the gaze from the usual EU-centric take on “EU transformative power” to bringing in, and indeed departing from, the politics, perspectives, narratives, and histories of these countries. The course addresses, among others, issues such as post-communist transformation and regime change, democratization and marketization, nationalism and historic memory & trauma, populism and authoritarianism, national and European culture & identity, belonging and non-belonging.