Dr Heather Grabbe joined the CER as Research Director in October 2000. She is responsible for overseeing the Centre's research programme, events and publications.
Her own research is on EU enlargement, both the current accession process and its longer-term implications for the European Union, for post-communist transformation, and for the wider Europe. Other research projects include the extension of Schengen eastwards, EU institutional development, British-German relations, and the impact of Europeanisation on governance in central and eastern Europe.
Heather's publications on enlargement include the book Enlarging the EU Eastwards (1998, London: Cassell/RIIA, co-author Kirsty Hughes), written while she was a Research Fellow at the Royal Institute for International Affairs. She has been a visiting fellow at the European University Institute (Florence), the Western European Union Institute for Security Studies (Paris) and the Centre for International Relations (Warsaw), and she was an editor at the consultancy Oxford Analytica. She also has a non-stipendiary JRF at Wolfson College, Oxford University.
Heather holds a PhD from Birmingham University and an MA (Oxon) in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University. She speaks French, Italian, German and some Polish.
Heather is a member of the Council of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the British Königswinter Committee, the Wilton Park Academic Council, and the Governing Body of the British Association for Central and Eastern Europe.
Main areas of expertise: EU enlargement, central and eastern Europe, institutional reform, the EU's budget, justice and home affairs, Schengen.