Short Portrait
You can find more information and a full academic CV here: www.leandrabias.com
I joined the Institute of Political Science in October 2022. I am also affiliated with ZOiS - the Berlin-based Centre for East European and international studies. As a comparative politics scholar, I focuse on how (de-)democratization and gender influence each other. I investigate this through the lens of feminist social movements, governments and political parties. To do so I use qualitative methods, including critical discourse and narrative analysis, interviews, case studies and focus groups. Regionally, I specialise in Russia and the Western Balkans. My research has received multiple awards, in particular the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Joni Lovenduski PhD Prize in Gender and Politics.
My three year postdoctoral research looks at the rise and use of the narrative of defending "traditional values" in Russian foreign policy. In addition, I co-direct the Horizon Europe project UNTWIST: policy recommendations to regain "losers of feminism" as mainstream voters. Together with eight partners we research six case studies, including Switzerland, over the next three years (2023-2026).
Together with PRIMA fellow Elizabeth Mesok, I co-founded the research network Political Science and Gender Studies. I am member of the newly created academic network Feminisms and Wars community, initiated by the Swedish Defence University, the Finnish Institute for International Affairs and the University of Iceland and funded by NordForsk (Grant 135988). I co-founded the research plattform Conflict and Peace in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and am part of the research platform Language, Violence and Experience of Violence in Southeast-/ Eastern Europe in the 20th and 21st century. Both are based at the Walter Benjamin Kolleg of the University of Bern.
I obtained my DPhil in Politics in autumn 2020 from the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. Comparing Russia and Serbia, I analyzed how backlash against "gender ideology" is instrumental for authoritarian regimes and how it impacts feminist interpretation of power relations and strategies for subversion, nationally and transnationally. The thesis also received an honorable mention by the Swiss Association for Gender Studies. I furthermore got the Young Scholar Award 2022 by the Walter Benjamin Kolleg for my interdisciplinary approach and commitment to science communication.
I have held numerous visiting fellowships, i.a. at Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Belgrade (2017), the Department of Comparative Politics at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in St. Petersburg (2017) and the Albert Hirschman Centre for Democracy at the Geneva Graduate Institute (2018).
Between 2020 and 2022, I worked as senior researcher and gender advisor at swisspeace, an associated institute of the University of Basel, where I specialised in policy-relevant research related to feminist foreign policy and the UN Women, Peace and Security agenda.
