Tom Theuns is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Institute of Political Science.

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Tom Theuns is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Institute of Political Science in Leiden and Associate Researcher at the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po Paris. Previously, he held a research position at Utrecht University and a teaching position at the University of Amsterdam. He defended his PhD in Political Science at Sciences Po in 2017. Before Paris, he read for an MPhil in Politics at Balliol College, University of Oxford, and a BA in Liberal Arts and Sciences at University College Maastricht.

Tom Theuns’ PhD dissertation, ‘The Legitimacy of EU Democracy Promotion in the Neighbourhood’, articulated a normative theory of democracy promotion and examined the legitimacy and desirability of EU democracy promotion in Eastern Europe and North Africa using the tools of political theory.

Current research projects investigate the right to vote, especially the democratic legitimacy of disenfranchisement and the appropriate boundaries of the franchise, the tension between democratic ideals and EU policies, procedural accounts of the value and justification of democratic government and the legitimate scope of EU policies designed to protect and entrench democratic government.

Tom Theuns has published several book chapters and reviews as well as peer-reviewed journal articles in journals such as the American Political Science Review, the Journal of European Integration, the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, the Australian Journal of Politics and History, and the Journal of Comparative Law.