Prof. Dr. Lisbeth Zimmermann (Principal Investigator)
Since 2022 Professor Dr. Lisbeth Zimmermann is Professor of International Institutions and Peace Processes at Goethe University. Previously, she held the Chair of International Relations at Zeppelin University (2018-2022). Her research focuses on current challenges of a multilateral world order, international organizations, international norms, and peacebuilding.
Lisbeth Zimmermann studied political science at the Freie Universität Berlin with a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation (2002-2007). In November 2012, she was awarded a PhD at TU Darmstadt. Lisbeth Zimmermann worked as a Post-doc in the context of the Cluster of Excellence “Formation of Normative Orders” (2012-2015) and as a senior researcher at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (2015-2018). Fellowships as a visiting researcher took her, among others, to the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. (2011) and to the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence (2015). Since 2022, she has been the Principal Investigator of the Farrio project.
FARRIO research focus:
Within the FARRIO project, Lisbeth Zimmermann is responsible for project management, the project’s research design, and transnational networks.
Prof. Dr. Matthias Ecker-Ehrhardt (Affiliated Researcher)
Matthias Ecker-Ehrhardt is deputy professor of the Chair of International Institutions and Peace Processes. His primary research interests relate to the fields of international politics and communication with a focus on authority, legitimacy, and politicization of international organizations.
He studied political science at the Free University of Berlin, where he completed his doctorate in 2003 with a dissertation on “Argument, Coalitions, Cognitions: The German Debate on the Enlargement of the EU to the East”. From 2005 to 2013, he was a senior researcher in the “Transnational Conflicts and International Institutions” department at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB). Between 2014 and 2017, he led the DFG project “The Communicated IO: Public Relations, Inclusion of Civil Society Actors and the Global Politicization of International Organizations” at the Center for Transnational Relations, Foreign and Security Policy at Freie Universität Berlin. In 2020/2021 he was Senior Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Center for Global Cooperation Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen. From 2021-24, he led the BMBF-funded project “(De)Legitimation Surveys: Political Ideology, Peer Opinion, Nonstate Actor Inclusion, and the Social Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions”. Matthias Ecker-Ehrhardt has held professorships in International Relations at the Free University of Berlin (2012/2013, 2017), the University of Leipzig (2013/2014, 2017-2020) and the Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg (2024-2025).
FARRIO research focus:
Within the FARRIO project, Matthias Ecker-Ehrhardt contributes research on IO digital communication, how such communication adapts to far-right contestation, and when users, including far-right sceptics of IOs, engage with IO messages.
Dr. Alexandros Tokhi (Post-Doc Researcher)
Since October 2022 Alexandros Tokhi is a postdoctoral researcher in the FARRIO project. Previously, he has been a research fellow at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, a member of the Horizon 2020 project “GLOBE-The European Union in Global Governance” (2019-2022), and a stand-in professor for Thomas Risse at the Freie Universität Berlin (2019). His research focuses on international institutions, authoritarianism and democracy in world politics, human rights and international security, and quantitative methods.
He received his PhD from the Freie Universität Berlin (2013) and has been a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Center for European Studies (2015) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2016). Tokhi has published with Oxford University Press, in the Journal of European Integration, Global Policy, and International Studies Quarterly. In 2020, he received, together with Xinyuan Dai, the Best Paper Award of the Human Rights Section of the American Political Science Association.
FARRIO research focus:
Within the FARRIO project, Alexandros Tokhi contributes to developing the analytical framework and the project’s research design. He also focuses on the issue-specific case studies of far-right contestation of human rights and international finance.
Franziska Höhne (PhD Researcher)
Franziska Höhne is a PhD student at the Chair of International Institutions and Peace Processes. In her Bachelor’s degree, she studied International Relations with a minor in Communication Studies at the University of Erfurt with a stay at the Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Spain, followed by a Master’s degree in Global Studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden (M. Sc., with distinction). During her studies, she completed various internships (including in the research project “TRANSFORM Regional Cooperation and the Transformation of National Sovereignty” at the University of Gothenburg and at the Permanent Mission of Germany to the United Nations in Geneva) and was a German scholarship holder. After working as a Blue Book Trainee at the European Commission, DG Research & Innovation, and at the European Policy Centre, Brussels, she worked as a research assistant at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation Research from 2022 to 2023.
FARRIO research focus:
Within the FARRIO project, Franziska Höhne focuses on far-right networks and their effects in the field of environmental and climate policy.
Lisa-Maria Stilper (Student research assistant)
Lisa-Maria Stilper is a master’s student of Sociology at Philipps University Marburg. She completed her bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Public Law at Goethe University Frankfurt in 2025, spending one semester abroad in Istanbul. In her studies, she focuses on qualitative data analysis and security and development. She has been a research assistant in the FARRIO project since May 2023.
Lilli Blank (Student research assistant)
Lilli Blank is a student in the joint Master’s program in
International Studies/Peace and Conflict Research at Goethe University Frankfurt and Technical University Darmstadt. She completed her bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Konstanz, spending one semester abroad in Stockholm, Sweden. In her studies, she focuses on quantitative research methods and conflict data. Lilli has worked for the Centre for Planetary Health Policy, ZDF, and the German Mission to the United Nations in New York City. Since October 2025, she has been a research assistant on the FARRIO project.