Mgr./Doctoral Researcher
Supervisor/advisor: Prof. Dr. Katrin Kinzelbach
Contact: zuzana.jurasova@fau.de
Short Bio
Zuzana Jurasova studied Political Science and Public Law at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, where her bachelor’s thesis was recognised for outstanding achievement. She holds a master’s degree in Translation and Interpreting from Comenius University in Bratislava. She later worked as a research associate at the Institute of Political Science at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. In 2024, together with Prof. Dr. Katrin Kinzelbach, she co-led a research lab on academic freedom and international human rights protection in cooperation with the Scholars at Risk Network. She is currently pursuing a PhD as a Konrad Adenauer Foundation doctoral fellow. Her project examines the erosion of democracy and human rights in Europe through a qualitative study of Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Using a comparative case study design and process tracing, it analyzes how institutional change, populism, political polarization, external authoritarian influence and civil society mobilization interact in democratic backsliding. The study situates these dynamics within broader debates on autocratization as a megatrend affecting human rights. Her research interests include autocratization, democratic resilience and human rights contestations with a focus on Eastern Europe. In parallel, she works as a lecturer in Swedish at the University’s Language Centre.
My doctoral research investigates why democratic erosion and human rights backsliding have become more pronounced in Slovakia than in the Czech Republic despite their shared historical experience and parallel processes of democratization and European integration. Drawing on contemporary theories of democratic resilience, the project examines how institutional change, populism, political polarization, external authoritarian influence, and civil society mobilization shape democratic outcomes. Situated within broader debates on autocratization as a megatrend transforming human rights, the study employs a comparative case study design and process tracing methods to reconstruct causal mechanisms through systematic analysis of causal “traces” and a most similar systems design to explain divergent outcomes.