Paulina Lenik
Portrait of Paulina Lenik

Paulina Lenik

Political economist · Jagiellonian University, Kraków

I study populism, institutional trust and electoral behaviour in Central and Eastern Europe, using quantitative methods: survey data, multilevel and spatial models, and causal designs for regional policy.

I hold a PhD in Economics from UCL’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies, where I was an Early-Stage Researcher on the Horizon 2020 project FATIGUE, and an MSt in Diplomatic Studies from the University of Oxford. Before academia I worked at the EU Delegation to Uzbekistan, the European Parliament and the Polish Mission to the UN.

Email ORCID Scopus CV (PDF)

Research

Journal articles

  1. 2026 From protest to piety: the cultural consolidation of PiS voters in Poland East European Politics
  2. 2025 The gender gap in the populist vote: the Bulgarian and Hungarian cases East European Politics and Societies
  3. 2024 Cut from the same cloth? Identifying a difference between populist parties in CEE and Western Europe East European Politics
  4. 2024 Defining and researching populist parties in Central and Eastern Europe with Natasza Styczyńska · Teoria Polityki
  5. 2024 A thickened demand for populism: comparison of voters’ attitudes in CEE and Western Europe Post-Communist Economies
  6. 2023 Trusting the untrustworthy: an exploration of attitudes towards the populist government in Poland using survey data Europe-Asia Studies

Book chapters

  1. 2025 Trapped in the feudal past? Examining the difference in welfare preferences between the CEE and the West In The Anatomy of Right-Wing Populism: Dealing with Transformational Fatigue in Central and Eastern Europe, UCL Press
  2. 2023 The two dissimilar cases of a rise in populism: Poland and Czechia In Faces of Populism in Central and South-Eastern Europe, Jagiellonian University Press
  3. 2022 Market transformation under Fidesz: energy and banking policy review since 2010 In Contemporary Populism and Its Political Consequences

Working papers

  1. 2026 Affective polarisation in CSES Module 6: a replication pipeline and an exploratory test of GenAI occupational exposure SocArXiv preprint

Commentary

  1. 2020Whither dataveillance? Polish data harvest in times of pandemic
  2. 2020Polish populism in times of pandemic
  3. 2020Why the haste? Polish presidential elections, PiS and constitutional conundrum
  4. 2020The “good change”: Polish populist presidential campaign 2015 and now (with Carolin Heilig) · SSEES Research Blog

Teaching

  1. NowIntroduction to Economics · lecture course, Jagiellonian University
  2. 2023Introduction to Econometrics · postgraduate, Kozminski University
  3. 2020–21Economics of Transition; Applied Game Theory; Quantitative Methods; International Business · teaching assistant, UCL SSEES

Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK).

CV

  1. 2024–Assistant Professor in Political Economy · Jagiellonian University, Kraków
  2. 2023–24Assistant Professor in Economics · Kozminski University, Warsaw
  3. 2022–23Attaché, Economic Department · EU Delegation to Uzbekistan
  4. 2023PhD in Economics · UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies
  5. 2018MSt in Diplomatic Studies · University of Oxford
  6. 2014MA in European Studies · Jagiellonian University

Full CV (PDF)

Contact

p.lenik@uj.edu.pl
Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland