Matthew Frear
Assistant professor
- Name
- Dr. M.J. Frear
- Telephone
- +31 71 527 2089
- m.j.frear@hum.leidenuniv.nl
- ORCID iD
- 0000-0001-7334-649X
Matthew Frear is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of History. He teaches and supervises students on the BA International Studies, MA International Relations, BA Russian Studies, and MA Russian and Eurasian Studies programmes. His main fields of research are Russian and Eurasian politics and international relations, and comparative authoritarianism. He is a researcher on the EU-STRAT project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. He is also affiliated with the Central and East European Studies Centre in Leiden.
Fields of interest
Authoritarian consolidation and non-democratic regimes; opposition politics, popular protest and democratisation; Belarusian government and politics; international relations of Russia and Eurasia.
Research
Dr. Frear's research lies at the nexus of comparative politics and international relations, with a focus on Russia and Eastern Europe, and Belarus in particular. He has published original reseach on Belarusian politics and foreign policy and presented numerous papers at academic conferences in Europe, North America and Asia.
Dr. Frear is currently part of the Leiden team in the EU-STRAT project: ‘The EU and Eastern Partnership Countries: An Inside-Out Analysis and Strategic Assessment’, which is funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. The project focuses on Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova, and involves partner institutions from ten countries.
Teaching activities
Dr. Frear teaches a range of courses on Russian and Eurasian politics and international relations at both the Leiden main campus and in The Hague.
Curriculum vitae
Dr. Frear holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham (UK, 2011). He has been a lecturer at the University of Birmingham and Aston University, before joining Leiden University in 2013.
Outside academia, Dr. Frear has contributed to policy discussions and briefings on Russia and Eurasian politics at a number of British and Dutch governmental bodies, international organisations and think tanks. He has also been deployed as an international election observer for the OSCE/ODIHR in Ukraine, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan. Earlier in his career he spent many years working in public dipomacy for the British Council, including Russia and Ukraine.
Assistant professor
- Faculty of Humanities
- Institute for History
- History and International Studies
- Frear M.J. (25 May 2018), 'An Anatomy of Adaptive Authoritarianism in Belarus’ Stichting Historische Studiereizen Grand Tour guest lecture, University of Amsterdam, 25 May 2018. [lecture].