Anja Thomas

Anja Thomas is Associate Professor (Maîtresse de conférences) at the University of Lille and Visiting Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University Institute (EUI). In the past, Anja was OxPo Postdoctoral Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford University, and Max Weber Fellow at the EUI.

Her research focusses on the transformation of representative democracy. She works on members of parliament as main anchors of representation and studies their interaction with government, business and civil society at different levels of governance. Anja combines ethnographic work with systematic comparison.

During her joint agreement thesis between Sciences Po and the University of Cologne, Anja worked on the (dis)institutionalisation of European affairs control in the French Assemblée nationale and the German Bundestag. Her work draws on different bodies of literature, in particular comparative democracy studies and parliamentary sociology, political economy, the sociology of institutions and the study of regimes.

Anja has taught and published widely on questions relating to parliamentary sociology and European integration in different academic communities and languages in Europe.

Her award-winning PhD was published with the German academic publishing house NOMOS: Assemblée nationale, Bundestag and the European Union. The micro-sociological causes of the European integration paradox (2019).