Tarik Abou-Chadi to Become Director at the WZB in 2027

Political scientist Tarik Abou-Chadi will become a new director of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center on January 1, 2027, where he will establish and lead a department for democracy research. His future research program will build on various topics currently being studied at the WZB while also providing new impetus.

Abou-Chadi is currently Professor of European Politics at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College. The transformation of European party systems lies at the heart of his research. This includes, for example, the following key questions: How have new parties been able to establish themselves in recent decades, and how has this influenced political competition? What strategies have other parties developed in response, and why have some established parties managed to hold their ground while others have been marginalized? And how do socio-economic conditions and social inequality contribute to these transformations? A particular focus is on the rise of the radical right and the crisis of social democratic parties in Europe.

The research program for his future department at the WZB will focus on three areas: first, the role of political parties and voters in a transforming Europe; second, the challenges of socio-economic transformation in light of the dangers posed by authoritarian backlashes; and third, democratic resilience.

“With Tarik Abou-Chadi, we have been able to attract an internationally renowned scholar to the WZB whose research topics offer many points of connection for other researchers at the WZB,” said Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln, President of the WZB. “He also brings extensive experience in both interdisciplinary collaboration and science communication and knowledge transfer. We are all very much looking forward to working with him.”

For Abou-Chadi, born in 1985, the move to the WZB also marks a return to Berlin, where he earned his doctorate from Humboldt University in 2015. He subsequently worked at the University of Zurich before moving to Oxford. He has received various awards, including the Henrik Enderlein Prize for Research Excellence in the Social Sciences in 2022—the first time the prize was awarded—and a fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in 2023. He reaches a broader audience through contributions to publications such as The Guardian and Der Spiegel, as well as through his podcast “Transformation of European Politics.” “The WZB stands for basic social science research on relevant societal issues, and I look forward to contributing my own research to the interdisciplinary exchange within the institute as well as with existing and future partners,” says Tarik Abou-Chadi.