Anja's research focuses on the transformation of democracy in Europe and on the European Union as socio-political regime. Her research explores questions of democratic regime change, of norm transformation and of contextualised standards for democratic 'quality'. To pursue these questions, Anja studies role-taking and practices of representation in parliamentary democracies. She is for example interested in the changes of Members of Parliaments' interactions with government, business and civil society actors at different levels of governance in the framework of European integration processes or under the pressure of populism as specific democratic morals inducing behavioural change.

Anja combines ethnographic work with systematic comparison across groups and time periods. Her work draws on different bodies of literature and ‘state(s) of the art’, in particular comparative democracy studies and parliamentary sociology, political economy, the sociology of institutions and the study of regimes.