Sherrill Stroschein

Dr Sherrill Stroschein

Mid-Career Fellow 2017-18

Ethnic Enclaves and Entrenchment: City Politics and Democratic Control

Democratic backsliding can be understood as the removal of alternatives to central control. But where ethnic groups are mobilized into parties, ethnic enclaves can demonstrate the political limits of such central control. This research examined city council politics in ethnic enclaves of the Balkans and Eastern Europe across a 30-year period – in Albanian-majority cities in North Macedonia and Hungarian-majority cities in Serbia, Romania, and Slovakia. The resulting evidence outlines how local political agency might counter central control, and the dynamics of durable versus fleeting political resistance. The book is under contract with Cambridge University Press, with expected publication in 2026 or 2027.

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Areas of interest

Politics Democracy Post-Communism Ethnicity Religious Identity Authoritarianism Nationalism Eastern Europe North Macedonia Southern Europe Serbia Romania Slovakia Balkans

Cohort

MCF3

Biography

Sherrill Stroschein is Reader in Politics at UCL. She joined UCL in 2005 as Programme Coordinator of the MSc in Democracy and Comparative Politics. She was previously an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies (2003-2005) and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Ohio University (2001-2005). She has also been a fellow at the Institute on Race and Social Division at Boston University (2000-2001). She received her PhD from Columbia University in 2000.

Sherrill is an Associate Editor of the journal Problems of Post-Communism, and an Advisory Board member for the Association for the Study of Nationalities.

Sherrill's research examines the dynamics of ethnic or religious identity in politics, in democratic states as well as democratising states or hybrid regimes. She is currently especially interested in states where democratic structures are incrementally replaced with more authoritarian control or patronal rule. She has published articles in Perspectives on Politics, Party Politics, Nations and Nationalism, Europe-Asia Studies, and Ethnopolitics, as well as other journals.

Biographical details correct as of 14.08.25