Dr. Žilvinas Švedkauskas

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Žilvinas Švedkauskas is the author of “The Constitution We Fear: How Patient Autocrats Capture the Courts and Disassemble Checks and Balances” (Budrich Academic Press, forthcoming 2026) and a Bucerius Fellow at the ZEIT-Stiftung. He holds a joint Master’s degree in “Comparative & Middle East Politics and Society” from the American University in Cairo and Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, where he also defended his PhD in 2024.

Žilvinas’ research focus spans democratization, constitutional politics, and digitalization. He has published well-received articles and policy pieces with outlets such as Freedom House, the Washington Post, and Alternatives: Global, Local, Political. He serves as the National Expert for Lithuania for the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project at the University of Gothenburg and served as a Board Member at the Euromed Young Researchers Lab, hosted by the EuroMeSCo network of research centres (2021-2022).

Since 2022, Žilvinas has led OSMOS (www.osmos.lt), a Lithuania-based think-and-do tank, building new digital connections between the Baltics and like-minded partner countries. He also regularly provides comments about political developments in the Middle East and Africa for Lithuanian media.

Selected conference presentations

• “Digital Surveillance, Master Key for MENA Autocrats.” Presentation at ECPR General Conference, Prague, August 2023.
• “Panopticon Exported: Al-Enabled Surveillance in the MENA Digital Sphere.” Presentation at German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), Berlin, June 2022.
• “Patient Autocrats: Constitutional Capture in the EU and its Neighbourhood.” Presentation at IPSA World Congress, July 2021 / European University Institute, October 2021.
• “Framing the Pandemic and the Rise of the Digital Surveillance State.” Presentation at ISA Virtual Convention, April 2021.