Estelle E. Brun

Estelle E. Brun entered the political science Ph.D. program at BU in the Fall of 2022, with a focus in comparative politics and European studies. She graduated from BU’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies with a B.A. in International Relations in 2018 before obtaining an M.Sc. in Comparative Politics (Nationalism and Ethnic Politics) with Distinction from the London School of Economics (LSE) in 2019. Estelle’s main interests lie in the nexus between nationalism and institutional memory at the sub-regional, national and supra-national level in Western Europe. In her dissertation, she explores how and why institutional memory changes over time using a multi-method approach. She is also interested in popular culture and is running several side research projects on the relationship between political attitudes and cultural realms using the Eurovision Song Contest. To learn more about Brun’s research and publications, visit her webpage.

In Spring 2025, Estelle received a CISS Summer mini-grant to support her support her fieldwork in South Carolina, where she seeks to explore the politicization of the state’s memory through qualitative interviews and visits to war monuments and museums. This fieldwork will inform her dissertation, specifically the first step of her theory-building and the empirical chapter on the South Carolina/United States case study. Learn more in our featured article.