Giselle BOSSE

Prof. Dr. Giselle Bosse is a Full Professor and holds a personal chair in EU External Democracy Support, as well as the Jean Monnet Chair in EU Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University. She is also a Fellow at the European Democracy Hub in Brussels.

Her research examines EU relations with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine, emphasising the EU's democracy support initiatives through the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and the Eastern Partnership (EaP), and EU policies to counter democratic backsliding and autocratisation in EaP countries. Bosse’s research also addresses EU enlargement, with a focus on the integration pathways for Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. Her studies emphasise the role and functioning of democratic institutions and the rule of law within these accession countries, while also investigating how citizens and civil soceity from both EU member states and accession countries engage in the enlargement process.

More broadly, Bosse's work focuses on the role of values in the EU's foreign policy and international relations, including recent publications on how norms- and rights- based justifications influenced the EU's response to Russia's war against Ukraine (Bosse 2022, 2023).

Bosse has received several major research grants, including a VENI Grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for her work on EU relations with autocratic regimes (2013-2016) and an ASPASIA Research Grant on non-state actors in EU foreign policy (2018-2022). She currently leads work packages for EU Horizon projects EMBRACE (2022-2025) and INVIGORATE (2024-2027), which address barriers to democratisation in the EU's neighbourhood.

Bosse has widely published her research in many international journals and books, inter alia in the Journal of Common Market Studies, Democratization, Geopolitics, Europe-Asia Studies, Cooperation and Conflict and with Manchester University Press. She frequently presents her work at leading think tanks in Europe, and has contributed to several commissioned studies for EU institutions. She regularly appears as an expert commentator in the media, including NPO1, Euronews, Deutsche Welle, AFP, Libération or L1 Limburg. 

She is co-coordinator of the EmergEU Jean Monnet Centre at the Centre for European Research in Maastricht (CERiM), Research Associate at the Martens Centre in Brussels, and visiting professor at the College of Europe (Bruges) and the Diplomatic School of Armenia (Yerevan). Between 2020-2022, she served as Vice Dean Education at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and from 2016-2020 she was Programme Director of the Research Master European Studies. She has also been visiting fellow at the Brussels School of International Studies (BSIS) and at the Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Brussels. Bosse holds an MA degree from the College of Europe (Natolin) and a PhD from Aberystwyth University. 

Recent activities:

• Bosse, G. (2021) Freedom of speech and media in the COVID-19 context, Policy Report for Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum: Working Group ‘Democracy, human rights, good governance and stability (with A. Vieira & M. Höpner).
• Bosse, G. (2021) Persuading the giant? Explaining Eastern Partnership states’ unexpected negotiation success in relations with the European Union, International Negotiation (with A. Vieira).
• Bosse, G. (2021) Norm diffusion beyond the membership perspective: Does the EU (still) matter for democratic reform progress in the post-Soviet space? In: Fromage, D. (Ed) (Re-) defining Membership: Differentiation in and outside the European Union, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
• Bosse, G. (2020) Ukraine and the European Union, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics(June 2020).
• Bosse, G. (2019) Ten years of the Eastern Partnership: What role for the EU as a promoter of democracy?, European View, 18(2): 1-23.
• Bosse, G. (2019) Opening Speech at European Commission Eastern Partnership Conference: Promoting Common Values through Education and Culture, Tbilisi, 25-26 June.
• Bosse, G., & Guedes Vieira, A. V. (2018). Human rights in Belarus: the EU’s role since 2016. Brussels: European Parliament, Human Rights Committee. https://doi.org/10.2861/329240​

For more information, please visit: www.giselle-bosse.eu