Harald Wydra

Professor Harald Wydra is the Henry Philpott College Professor in Politics at University of Cambridge, affiliated with St Catharine’s College. He holds a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence and studied at the Universities of Regensburg and Salamanca.

• Specializes in Eastern European/Russian politics, democracy theory, and political anthropology
• Contributed foundational work on interpretive methods and politics of memory
• Served as Visiting Professor at Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, University of Wrocław, and LUISS University

His research spans democratization processes, political myths, and religion-state interactions, reflected in publications like Politics and the Sacred (2015) and Communism and the Emergence of Democracy (2007). Currently editing a Handbook of Political Anthropology (forthcoming, Edward Elgar). Co-edited Democracy and Myth in Russia and Eastern Europe (2008) and Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality (2015).