Hanna Folsz is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Stanford University. Her research focuses on opposition parties in authoritarian dominant-party regimes, with a particular focus on the challenges and opportunities they face in countering autocratization. More broadly, her work examines the causes and consequences of democratic backsliding, populism, media capture, and political favoritism — primarily in East-Central Europe and, secondarily, in Latin America. She uses a multi-method approach, including modern causal inference and text analysis techniques.

Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the American Political Science Association, among others. She is the co-founder and co-organizer of EEPGW, a monthly online graduate student workshop on East European politics, and a co-founder and regular contributor to The Hungarian Observer, the most widely read online newsletter on Hungarian politics and culture. At Stanford, she is an active member of  CDDRL's Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (PovGov).

Paula Ganga is an assistant professor of political economy at Duke Kunshan University as well as a visiting fellow with the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at Stanford University. She completed her Ph.D. in Government at Georgetown University, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, a postdoctoral fellow with the Skalny Center for Polish and Central Eastern European Studies and a George F. Kennan short-term scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. Her research focuses on the political determinants of switches between privatization and nationalization in Eastern Europe and beyond. This research bears directly on how we view the link between democracy and market capitalism, the economic consequences of populism, rising illiberalism in recent political transitions, and state capitalism. She is currently working on a book manuscript on populism and economic nationalism in Eastern Europe.

Veronica Anghel is a Postdoctoral Fulbright Fellow and Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar at The Europe Center. Her research focuses on the challenges to democratic state building and party politics in post-communist Europe. Her project is centered on the clashes between the intrinsic effects of formal and informal institutions and elite agency as critical junctures that lead to different outcomes of democratization. Her main area of study is the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Currently, she engages in the academic debate regarding the perceived democratic ‘backlash’ of CEE post-communist states. Previously, Dr. Anghel held fellowships at the Johns Hopkins University – School of Advanced International Studies, the Institute for Human Sciences Vienna, the Institute for Central Europe Vienna, the University of Bordeaux and the Institute for Government in Vienna. Following her Stanford appointment, Dr. Anghel will join the European University Institute in Florence on a Max Weber Scholarship (2020 – 2021).

Dr. Anghel received her PhD summa cum laude from the University of Bucharest in co-direction with the University of Bordeaux. Her thesis ‘The Formation of Coalition Governments in Romania: Patterns Behind the Drift’ was awarded the prize of the best dissertation defended in 2018. Research based on this work was published in East European Politics and Societies, Government & Opposition and edited volumes. She is an analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit and Oxford Analytica on issues related to CEE countries. She is also an editorial fellow for Government & Opposition. Dr. Anghel also worked as a foreign affairs advisor for the Romanian Presidential Administration (2015) and the Romanian Senate (2012 - 2015).