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Full Audio:

European and Eurasian Studies Series

hosted by Professor Veronica Anghel


Joan Hoey is the Director for The Economist's flagship annual Democracy Index, recognised by governments, international organisations, corporates and academia as a leading measure of global democracy.

She is an expert on European political economy, with a special interest in democracy, governance, political risk and East European post-communist transition, and a writer on international affairs. Hoey is a former regional director for Europe at the Economist Intelligence Unit, where she led a team of analysts covering 50 countries in Europe and Central Asia. She now works as a consultant for the Economist Group. Hoey joined EIU in 1995, working as a Senior Analyst for Eastern Europe before becoming Regional Manager and then Director for Europe.

She began her career as a journalist covering UK and Irish affairs, before developing her interest and expertise in Eastern Europe over several decades from the late 1980s. She covered the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the wars in the former Yugoslavia, before pursuing her career in country analysis and forecasting. Hoey studied British, American and European History at Sussex University. She pursued postgraduate studies in Industrial Relations, and having grown up in a mill town in Lancashire, focused her research on the first major immigrant strike in Britain, by Asian and West Indian workers at Courtaulds' Red Scar Mills factory in Preston in 1965. Hoey is often invited to share her perspectives on Europe with senior corporate executives, academics and diplomatic officials. She is an accomplished chairperson and has chaired more than 50 Economist events, including prime ministers, presidents and senior government ministers and business leaders. She is an experienced public speaker, and has spoken at many international forums, and is a frequent commentator on European affairs.