Daniel Thomas is Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Political Science.

More information about Daniel Thomas

Short CV

Daniel Thomas is Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Political Science at Leiden University.

He served as head (‘scientific director’) of the Institute of Political Science in 2017-2020 and is co-founding director of the Leiden University Centre for International Relations (LUCIR). He also serves on the Steering Committees of the university’s Europe Hub and the university’s programme on Global Transformation and Governance Challenges (GTGC).

He was trained in Political Science at Brandeis University (BA) and Cornell University (MA, PhD). Before coming to Leiden, he held research and teaching positions at the European University Institute, Harvard University, Stanford University, University College Dublin, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Pittsburgh, and Williams College.

He has also worked in Brussels on international human rights and criminal justice issues at the European Commission’s Directorate General for External Relations (precursor to the European External Action Service).

Research

His research focuses on the sources, evolution and effects of international norms and institutions, especially as they relate to the politics of human rights, regional integration, and EU decision-making on foreign policy and enlargement policy. Among his current projects, he is collaborating with Karolina Pomorska on a multi-paper study of the protean power of Europe—in other words, how the EU responds to unforeseen external developments through policy innovation and institutional transformation.

His latest book—The Limits of Europe: Membership Norms and the Contestation of Regional Integration (Oxford)—uses multiple methods (normative genealogy, statistical regression, qualitative comparative analysis, process-tracing) to demonstrate how evolving normative definitions of Europe as a political community shaped EU decision-making on enlargement from the late 1950s to the present, with a detailed focus on policies toward Greece, Spain, Turkey and Ukraine.

He has also published The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights and the Demise of Communism (Princeton), Making EU Foreign Policy: National Preferences, European Norms and Common Policies (Palgrave), Negotiation Theory and the EU: The State of the Art (Routledge), World Security (St. Martin’s), and Peace and World Order Studies (Westview), plus journal articles and book chapters.

Teaching

He teaches courses on theories of international relations and the dynamics of international organisation, and supervises research students in these and related fields.

PhD supervision

Daniel Thomas is available to supervise PhD students and invites PhD research proposals in the areas of:

• international relations
• international organisation
• European integration
• politics of human rights

See for more information on PhD positions:

› Institute of Political Science: PhD

Publications