Team

Academic Freedom Index Project Team

The AFI project team consists of researchers from the FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany and researchers from V-Dem in Gothenburg, Sweden, one of the world’s largest social science data collection projects on democracy and related concepts.

We gratefully acknowledge that the German Volkswagen Foundation has committed to funding the Academic Freedom Index until 2025. Initial work on the index was supported by OSF’s Higher Education Support Program and a conference grant by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.

Principal Investigators

Katrin Kinzelbach

Katrin Kinzelbach is professor of political science at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, where she teaches the international politics of human rights. Kinzelbach serves on the Academic Freedom Committee of the International Studies Association. She is a project manager involved with the V-Dem project and co-leads the Academic Freedom Index project with Staffan I. Lindberg.

katrin.kinzelbach@fau.de
Staffan I. Lindberg

Staffan I. Lindberg is the director of the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg and one of five principal investigators for Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). In addition, he is a member of the Standing Committee for Freedom and Responsibility in Science 2022–2025 at the International Science Council. He is the principal investigator of the Academic Freedom Index project, co-led by Katrin Kinzelbach.

sil@v-dem.net

Postdoctoral and Affiliated Researchers

Angelo Vito Panaro

Angelo Vito Panaro is a postdoctoral researcher at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg. He works in the Academic Freedom Index project funded by the Volkswagen foundation. His research focuses on authoritarianism, democratic backsliding and academic freedom, comparative welfare states, politics of social policy, global poverty and redistribution, and the political economy of income and social inequality.

angelo.panaro@fau.de
Lars Lott

Lars Lott (née Pelke) is a postdoctoral researcher at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg. He worked in the Academic Freedom Index project from 2022-2024 and remains affilated with the project. His current work focuses on autocratization, democraitzation, academic freedom, and socioeconomic inequalites.

lars.lott@fau.de
Janika Spannagel

Janika Spannagel is a postdoctoral researcher at Freie Universität Berlin at the Cluster of Excellence “Contestations of the Liberal Scripts (SCRIPTS)." Her current work focuses on the diffusion and contestation of academic freedom norms. She co-developed the Academic Freedom Index prior to her position at FU Berlin.

janika.spannagel@fu-berlin.de
Ilyas Saliba

Associate fellow, Center for Applied Research in partnership with the Orient in Bonn (CARPO). Ilyas was involved in the Academic Freedom Index project until 2020.