Milada Anna Vachudova

Milada Anna Vachudova is a Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializing in European politics, postcommunist transformation, and the European Union's influence on democratization. She leads the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES), a flagship project measuring party positions across Europe. Her research focuses on democratic backsliding, ethnopopulism, and EU integration dynamics in Central and Eastern Europe.

Education includes a B.A. from Stanford University, followed by M.Phil./D.Phil. in Politics at the University of Oxford as a British Marshall Scholar. She served as Chair of UNC's Curriculum in Global Studies (2014–2019). Her award-winning book Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage and Integration After Communism (Oxford UP) explores EU's role in postcommunist transitions. She has held fellowships at Harvard, Princeton, and the European University Institute.

Research interests emphasize how external actors shape domestic political trajectories, particularly in postcommunist states. Recent work analyzes protest movements against authoritarian trends, EU's geopolitical role during crises like the Ukraine conflict, and the evolving nature of Euroscepticism.

Awards include the Stein Rokkan Prize for her comparative research. Her interdisciplinary approach combines historical institutionalism with quantitative survey analysis, as seen in CHES data projects tracking party systems across Europe over decades.