Marianne Kneuer is Professor of Comparative Politics at the Technische Universität Dresden. She previously taught comparative politics and international relations at the University of Hildesheim (2011-2021), where she also served as Director of the Institute for Social Sciences between 2012 and 2019. In 2018, Marianne Kneuer co-founded the Center for Digital Change at the same university, serving as a member of its Board of Trustees. Throughout her long academic career, she has been a visiting researcher at institutions such as GIGA Hamburg or Arizona State University, and before joining the University of Hildesheim she taught at the Universities of Erfurt, Darmstadt and Hagen (2005-2011). From 2018-2021, Kneuer was the President of the International Political Science Association (IPSA), and currently serves on its Executive Committee. Her research work spans multiple fields, including the study of processes of democratic erosion, the analysis of legitimization strategies of autocratic regimes, and the impact of digitization on various political processes. Her work has been published in high impact journals such as Democratization, Third World Quarterly, IPSR, Media and Communication, or the European Journal of Social Theory. Her latest book, “Authoritarian Gravity Centers: A Cross-Regional Study of Authoritarian Promotion and Diffusion” (co-authored with Thomas Demmelhuber) was published in 2020 by Routledge.