prof. dr. P. (Pieter) de Wilde

Pieter de Wilde holds the chair in European Politics & Society at the University of Groningen, Faculty of Arts. His research focuses on political conflict over European integration and globalization. This includes more specifically the politicization of European integration, EU responsiveness to public opinion, the role of national parliaments in the EU, Euroscepticism, and the extent to which various salient issues are embedded within a broader cleavage.

Before joining the University of Groningen in January 2024, he was Professor in Political Science (2019-2023), Professor in European Studies (2018-2019) and Associate Professor in European Studies (2016-2018) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway. His most recent research project was Unelected Representatives: The Impact on Liberal Democracy in Europe, which investigated how political activists such as Greta Thunberg can play a role as unelected representatives through representative claims-making, and how this affects citizens’ opinions about liberal democracy in Europe. He was also co-principal investigator for Trondheim Analytica, which investigated to what extent our social media profiles reveal our political preferences and ideology. From 2018 to 2022, he was work package leader and member of the steering board for the HorizonEurope project Reconciling Europe with its Citizens through Democracy and Rule of Law (RECONNECT), addressing democratic backsliding and debates about democracy within the European Union.

Before joining NTNU, he was a Senior Researcher at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Based in the Department of Global Governance, he contributed to the interdisciplinary project The Political Sociology of Cosmopolitanism and Communitarianism, investigating the extent to which a political cleavage between proponents and opponents of globalization is emerging in Western societies and within international organizations.

De Wilde holds a PhD in political science from ARENA, Center for European Studies, at the University of Oslo, where he conducted research on the politicization of European integration: the process through which EU membership and questions concerning further European integration have become politically salient and contested.

A complete CV can be found through this link.