Dr Simona Davidescu
Senior Lecturer

Profile

Biography

Dr. Simona Davidescu is a Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, interested in environmental and energy policy, with a focus on the European Union and Central and East European countries. Before moving to York in September 2011, she has been a Lecturer in European Politics at the University of Aberystwyth (2008-2010) and Teaching Fellow in Environmental Politics at the University of Southampton (2010-2011).

She is an Honorary Research Associate with the EU-Asia Institute at ESSCA, Angers, France and part of several research networks on energy policy, sustainability and the green economy with UACES CRN and ECPR.

Research

Overview

Simona’s research focuses on the European Union’s enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe, the process of democratization and environmental policy-making. She is currently conducting research and interested in supervising students on issues related to sustainable development policies and renewable energy in Eastern Europe, with a comparative focus on the new EU member states and the Eastern Partnership countries.

• Davidescu S, Hiteva R, Maltby T. Two steps forward, one step back: Renewable energy transitions in Bulgaria and Romania. Public Administration, (2018); 96:611–625. https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12522

•  ‘Environmental Policy in times of crisis: Romania’s troubled transition’, (2018) in Burns, Charlotte; Tobin, Paul and Sebastian Sewerin (eds.) The Impact of the Economic Crisis on European Environmental Policy, Oxford University Press, ISBN: 9780198826958.

• ‘The Europeanization of renewable energy policy in Romania’, in Solorio Sandoval, I. and Helge Jorgens (2017) A Guide to EU Renewable Energy Policy: Comparing Europeanization and Domestic Policy Change in EU Member States, Edward Elgar Publishing, ISBN: 978 1 78347 155 3

• ‘The Sustainable Development Discourse in post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe: the case of Romania’ (2013) in Sustainable Development and Governance in Europe. The evolution of the discourse on sustainability, edited by Pamela Barnes and Thomas Hoerber, Routledge, ISBN: 978-0-415-63007-8.

Supervision

PhD Supervision:

• David Salazar Gorjon -Punctuated equilibrium and agenda-setting in energy politics: explaining stability and radical policy change in the Mexican refining sector”
• Megan Connolly - Public Attitudes Towards Fusion Energy: A Qualitative Study in The UK
• Sophie Cogan - Exploring the role and realisation of values in fusion energy technology
• Xishun Deng - Pathways to Adaptive Water Governance: A Case of Lang-Mekong Cooperation

Dr Simona Davidescu welcomes PhD applications in the following areas:

• Energy and Environmental Politics and Policies
• European Union energy and climate policy
• East European politics and policies

Teaching

Undergraduate

Global Sustainability & Energy Policy

Postgraduate

Theories of the Policy Process

Public Management & Delivery

Challenges to Policy-making in Democratising Countries