Cas Mudde was born in the Netherlands, where he gained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science at Leiden University, under the supervision of the late Peter Mair. Before moving to the US in 2008, to join his wife, he held tenure-track positions at Central European University (Hungary), the University of Edinburgh (UK), and the University of Antwerp (Belgium). Before coming to UGA in 2012, he held temporary positions at the University of Oregon, University of Notre Dame, and DePauw University. He has also held visiting positions at Berlin Social Science Center (Germany), Charles University (Czech Republic), University of Amsterdam/Free University Amsterdam (The Netherlands), Academia Istropolitana (Slovakia), James I University (Spain), Malmo University (Sweden), Cornell University, and Rutgers University (US).
Mudde was the first chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) and the co-founder of the ECPR Standing Group on Extremism & Democracy. His research agenda aims to address the question: how can liberal democracies defend themselves against political challenges without undermining their core values? He has published widely on topics such as (un)civil society, democratization, Euroskepticism, extremism and democracy, political parties, and populism. His prime geographical regions of expertise are Europe, both East and West, and North America.
Professor Mudde is an expert on European politics and the foremost scholar on the far right in western democracies. His book Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2007) won the Stein Rokkan Prize in 2008 and was named an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice in 2008. His co-edited volume Populism in Europe and the Americas: Threat or Corrective for Democracy? (Cambridge University Press, 2012) was named an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice in 2013. In 2015 he won the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany and in 2017-18 he was the Belgian Francqui Professor Chair.
His most recent book is the co-authored, with with Sivan Hirsch-Hoefler, The Israeli Settler Movement: Assessing and Explaining Social Movement Success (Cambridge University Press, 2021). In 2019 he published The Far Right Today (Polity, 2019), which so far has been translated into almost 10 different languages. Other relatively recent publications include On Extremism and Democracy in Europe (Routledge, 2016), SYRIZA: The Failure of the Populist Promise (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), The Populist Radical Right: A Reader (Routledge, 2017), and The Far Right in America (Routledge, 2018). His co-authored book, with Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017), has so far been translated in almost 20 different languages.
He is current working on three new books, which are scheduled to be published in the coming five years.
Professor Mudde has been invited to speak at many academic and non-academic meetings worldwide, including at the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, and the World Foresight Forum. He is regularly consulted on issues of extremism and democracy by state and non-state organizations, such as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (UK), Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, Council of Europe, Global Affairs Canada, Migration Policy Institute, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (ISR), Ministry of Social Affairs (NL), Open Society Institute, Public Safety Canada, Southern Poverty Law Center, Prime Minister’s Office (S), and the US Helsinki Commission. He has appeared on radio and tv (e.g. ARD, BBC, NPR) and is regularly interviewed and quoted by the national and international media (e.g. BBC, CNN, The Economist, Haaretz, Reuters, Der Spiegel, Washington Times) and regularly contributes op-eds to international media.
Professor Mudde is a columnist for the Guardian US and a regular contributor to VoxEurop. Since June 2020, he hosts the biweekly podcast RADIKAAL, which focuses on the radical aspects of music, politics, and sports. (Source: University of Georgia, abbreviated and adapted CV. Full bio here)