Regitze H Rohlfing-Frederiksen

Regitze Helene Rohlfing is a PhD student at the Department of Political Science (Centre for European Politics) and iCourts at the Faculty of Law. Her research is in the field between political science and law with a focus on how civil society uses courts and law as a tool against democratic backsliding experienced in Central and Eastern Europe

Thus, Regitz's research focus is on various relevant aspects of social-legal and law & society research, democratic theory, civil society and European courts and legal integration. The project is both empirically and theoretically driven, in that it explores and discusses how to define and conceptualise civil society's so-called legal mobilisation based on how this takes place in Hungary and Poland.

Supervisor: Professor Marlene Wind (DPS)
Co-supervisor: Professor Mikael Rask Madsen (LAW)

Research stay as visiting PhD student: 
University of Warsaw, Department of Political Systems in Poland.
Central European University's Democracy Institute in Hungary. 

Fieldwork: Poland and Hungary in autumn 2021.

Affiliations
Regitze is a Vice-Chair and board member of the Danish NGO Nyt Europa, which is working on issues of democracy, climate, and civil society across Europe. She is furthermore founder of the Network for Young Women Scholars, which work to build connection and share experiences amongst female scholars across disciplines, universities and countries.

Previous research
Regitze has previously, as part of her master's degree, researched the relationship between civil society and the EU in the process of democratization of North Africa following the Arab Spring. Regitze has for this purpose conducted field studies in Morocco and Tunisia founded by the Danish Institute in Damascus.

Regitze was supervising master's thesis in the spring of 2021 with a focus on social movements, the EU, and the democratic backsliding of Poland and Hungary.

Regitze was part of the teaching team for the BA-course 'European Politics' for the Fall term 2020. Regitze has been teaching the Jean Monnet course at the Department of Political Science from spring 2016 to spring 2020. In the spring the course focused on the EU as an internal actor, and in the fall it focused on the Politics of the European Union including central structures and processes of the EU. 

• Empirical cases of democratic backsliding (in Central and Eastern Europe)
• Theoretical conceptualisation of democratic backsliding (fx autocratic legalism, autocratic constitutionalism, constitutional capture, lawfare)
• Civil society and social movements 
• The EU 
• Democratic theory and democratization
• European courts and legal integration in the EU
• Legal mobilization of civil society and judicialization from below
• EU's foreign policy, eg. the neighbourhood policy
• International relations, diplomacy and conflict studies
• Geographical areas of special interest: Central- and Eastern Europe, North Africa and the EU's Eastern and Southern neighbourhoods.

Danish, English, Swedish, French and German. Beginner's level in Polish.