Center for European Studies

I teach classes in comparative and European politics, with an emphasis on postcommunist Europe. I earned my doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley in 2003. Since then, I have held appointments at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies and at the University of Florida. I have also spent time as a visiting scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard and at the Center for Baltic and East European Studies at Södertörn University in Stockholm.

My first research project centered on state-building and state reform in the new democracies of postcommunist Europe, linking patterns of political patronage to the character of party competition (Runaway State-Building: Patronage Politics and Democratic Development, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006). A second strand of research explores how and when European integration influences domestic politics in Eastern Europe. In particular, I am examining the interaction between EU norms and postcommunist legacies in the field of gay rights. How has EU membership shaped gay-rights activism and backlashes against it? This research appears in journal articles and the book Coming Out of Communism: The Emergence of LGBT Activism in Eastern Europe (New York University Press, 2018). In a third strand of research, I am examining city-level politics in East European countries.

Curriculum Vitae

Recent Publications

Coming Out of Communism: The Emergence of LGBT Activism in Eastern Europe, New York University Press (September 2018).

Koen Slootmaeckers and Conor O’Dwyer. 2018. “Europeanization of Attitudes Towards Homosexuality: Exploring the Role of Education in the Transnational Diffusion of Values.” Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research 31(4): 406-428.

Conor O’Dwyer. 2018. “The Benefits of Backlash: EU Accession and the Organization of LGBT Activism in Postcommunist Poland and the Czech Republic.” East European Politics and Societies 32(4): 892-923.