Leonie Holthaus

Leonie Holthaus works as a research associate at the Institute of Political Science at the chair for “Transnational Governance”. Her research is focused on democratization and international relations. Leonie entered academia with works on regional integration and the legitimation of the monarchical rule in the Arabian Peninsula. In her PhD and the monograph (2018) resulting from it, she makes a contribution to historical and theoretical International Relations by reconstructing the impact of democratization on international relations and left-liberal democratic peace theories. As a Postdoc, Leonie begun studying democracy promotion in Tunisia and contributing to practice theoretical debates in International Relations.

Her recent research tackles the development of democracy promotion at the interface of theory and practice. She has three main research agendas within this broader framework: (1) exploration of democracy promotion changing practices in a historical manner, tracing democracy promotion back to epistemic transformations of Western colonialism; (2) application of the question of how democracy promotion is remade to an analysis of contemporary North American and German democracy promotion and academic interpretations of these activities; (3) empirical investigation of the changing practice of EU democracy assistance.

Among Leonie’s international cooperation partners is Prof. Dr. Michael Christensen. She is also a member of the network External Democracy Promotion https://www.external-democracy-promotion.eu/

Civil Society

Democratization

International Relations

International Organizations

Postcolonial Studies

Practice Theory

Qualitative Methodologies

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