Professor
Ph.D, University of California - Berkeley, 2003
Conor O’Dwyer teaches in comparative politics. His first book Runaway State-Building (2006) examines state- and party-building in Eastern Europe, focusing on the role of political patronage. A second book Coming Out of Communism: The Emergence of LGBT Activism in Eastern Europe (2018) analyzes how populist-nationalist backlash against EU norms has shaped the organization of regional LGBT-rights movements. He is also interested in city politics in postcommunist countries, particularly in relation to democratic backsliding. Before UF, O’Dwyer was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies and visiting scholar at the Center for European Studies (Harvard) and at the Center for Baltic and East European Studies (Södertörn University, Stockholm).