Cristina Parau

British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Cristina Parau is currently working on research projects funded by the British Academy and John Fell Fund (Oxford) investigate the trajectory taken by judicial reform in post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe and whether the EU is changing (or not) legal mentalities in this region. In addition she is exploring several other research ideas, namely: (1) how judicial independence has evolved in practice in post-Communist Europe after 1989; and (2) what are the informal institutions that contribute to the independence of the judiciary in the West, but are missing in Eastern Europe. Her previous research investigated the influence of the EU on State-civil society relations in an accession candidate of Central and Eastern Europe (Romania), and proposed a novel mechanism — the exploitation of accession uncertainty by transnational networks — that explains the puzzling variability in actual influence wielded by the EU over post-Communist candidate governments. Methodologically, she has an interest in combining constructivist and soft rational choice frameworks.

Previous positions

• Researcher, Government Department, LSE
• Researcher, Centre for the Study of Democracy, Westminster University
• Researcher, Politics Department, Queen Mary University of London

Grants

• £6,700 from the British Academy to research the Europeanization of Legal Mentalities in Eastern Europe (April 2010)
• £3,250 from the John Fell Fund, University of Oxford to carry out pilot research on judicial reform in Croatia and the Czech Republic under the project 'Beyond Judicial Independence: What Kind of Judiciary is Emerging in Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe?' (December 2009)
• £750 from the Law Department, University of Oxford to attend the American Political Science Association Conference (May 2009)
• £300 from Wolfson College’s Research Fund to attend the Political Science Association Conference in Manchester (February 2009)
• £245,538 from the British Academy to investigate judicial independence in post-Communist Eastern Europe (July 2007)
• £3,000 under the Erasmus Programme to attend, as a Visiting Fellow, the European University Institute in Florence (2005)
• Grants and scholarships towards my PhD amounting to £1,500 to £3,000 each: Teaching Studentship, LSE (2004); Ratiu Family Foundation Grant (2004, 2006); Central Research Fund Award, University of London (2003); Departmental Research Scholarship, LSE (2002, 2003).

Publications in preparation

• ‘Transnational Influence over Judicial Reform in Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe’ (article)
• ‘Independence or Supremacism? Judicial Reform in Post-Communist Eastern Europe’ (book chapter)
• Transnational Networks and Judicial Reform in Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe (monograph)