DR. Julia Langbein

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​What is your project and why did you choose it?

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I am involved in the project “Adaptation Strategies of Small Entrepreneurs in the Context of Moldova’s Economic Integration with the EU: Insights from Piața Centrală in Chișinău”, that I’m pursuing jointly with Sabine von Löwis. In many of my research projects I am interested in finding out whose interests (do not) count and what impact this has on political and economic development. Against this background, I have been researching Moldova’s economic integration with the EU in the past, mainly looking at the effects of EU trade liberalization on development and the extent to which politically connected firms benefit from better market access to the EU. The project on the Piața Centrală allows me to study ‘Europeanization from below’ by looking into how Moldova’s European integration process affects the everyday lives for traders, regulators, administrators, veterinaries working on the market.

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What brought your interest to Ukraine and Moldova?

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I began working on Ukraine in 2006 in the context of my PhD research. I was puzzled by the fact that international and EU market rules were enforced in some sectors of the Ukrainian economy despite the presence of domestic veto players who favoured the status quo, the lack of EU membership perspective and the presence of Russia as an alternative governance provider. So, I set out to explain this phenomenon. Later at ZOiS, I started a project on the effects of EU trade liberalization with the EU on development in Ukraine and Moldova. I wanted to understand who benefits from better market access to the EU in these countries and reveal potentially unintended negative consequences of this process and possible remedies.

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How has Russia's war against Ukraine affected your project?

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Originally, Sabine and I were planning to work on a comparative study of markets in Khmelnyckyj, Kharkiv, and Chisinau but our plans for fieldwork in Ukraine had to be postponed due to the war, so we work exclusively on the Piata Centrala in this project. In the future, we plan to conduct a case study on the textile industry in Moldova and Transnistria to investigate how local entrepreneurs are adapting to the changing geopolitical realities in the context of Moldova's economic integration into the EU and the war against Ukraine.

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Julia Langbein studied Political Science at Freie Universität Berlin and Russian Studies at the European University at St. Petersburg. She received her PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute in Florence.