Welcome
My name is Henriette Müller and I am an Assistant Professor of Gender, Governance and Society at New York University Abu Dhabi.
Focusing on the politics of gender, my research explores the nexus between gender and political leadership in complex governance systems, including the European Union, the GCC states, and international organizations.
At NYU Abu Dhabi, I teach courses and conduct research on women and leadership, gender and governance, and statehood from a global perspective.
The Remaking of the Multilateral Order: Women Diplomats at the UN
Together with Karen E. Smith (London School of Economics and Political Science) and supported by the LSE-NYU Research Seed Fund.
This research project investigates how the major shifts in multilateralism, combined with a populist and anti-gender backlash and the current prevalence of hypermasculine politics, impact the agency and diplomatic roles of women in multilateral organizations, specifically within the United Nations.
In particular, this project will compile a comprehensive dataset of all appointments of women permanent representatives and deputy permanent representatives to the UN in New York, UN Geneva, UN Nairobi, and UN Vienna between 1995 (the year of the final World Conference on Women) and 2025, including sociodemographic and government information. We will also conduct expert interviews with a number of women currently serving in those positions in all four UN sites to explore how they view their appointment amidst a rapidly changing world order.
Credit: Women in Diplomacy Project Report / LSE
Margrethe Vestager and European Competition: Gender and Political Leadership in Global Economic Governance
2nd Monograph
My second book project will focus on Margrethe Vestager, currently the Commission’s Executive Vice President and Commissioner for Competition (2014-2024), who has won landmark international antitrust cases, including against Amazon, Google, and Apple during her tenure.
Although she has been one of the longest-serving female commissioners and one of the most successful commissioners in Europe’s recent history, scholarship has been conspicuously missing, whether on Vestager’s leadership or her competition portfolio from a gender perspective.
Drawing on feminist economics, feminist institutionalism, and gender and leadership research, this project will analyze Vestager’s positioning as a leader and as a woman leader in global competition policy. The analysis will focus on her agenda-setting, in/formal mediation, and public-facing leadership, comparing these to other antitrust leaders, as well as examining how European and international audiences evaluated her leadership from a gender perspective.
Credit: European Commission
Advancing the Study of Gender and Political Leadership: Context-Sensitive and Intersectional Approaches
Special Issue: European Journal of Politics and Gender
Co-editors: Josefina Erikson (Uppsala University) and Henriette Müller
The objective of this special issue is to advance the study of gender and political leadership theoretically and empirically regarding the gendered conditions for political leadership (appointments to as well as performances of leadership), focusing on two dimensions: (1) similarities and differences across institutional and situational contexts of political leadership, and (2) leaders’ intersectional identities. We argue that context-sensitive and intersectional approaches provide new insights to identify key barriers and mechanisms conducive to more gender-equal and inclusive leadership conditions and performances.
Credit: EJPG
From the Far Right to the Far Left: Women Populist Leaders in Global Perspective
Academic Editor(s): Henriette Müller (New York University Abu Dhabi) and Pamela Pansardi (University of Pavia)
Submission of Abstracts: 1-15 September 2025
Submission of Full Papers: 15-30 March 2026
Publication of the Issue: July/December 2026
This thematic issue explores the rise and impact of women populist leaders across the ideological spectrum, from the far-left to the far-right, in a global context.
Combining single-case studies and comparative analyses, the issue examines the political strategies, rhetoric, and policies of women leaders in Europe and beyond. Contributions investigate the conditions that enable their rise to power, the ways they reconcile or challenge traditional gender norms, and their influence on both party dynamics and broader political institutions.
By focusing on the diverse ideological orientations of these leaders, the issue aims to uncover the commonalities and differences in their leadership styles, the role of gender in their political trajectories, and their impact on the representation of women’s interests and the empowerment of women in politics. This collective effort sheds light on the paradoxes of populist leadership and its implications for contemporary democracy.
Credit: Politics and Governance
The European Commission under President Ursula von der Leyen: Gender, Leadership, Policies and Crises
Edited Volume/under contract with Oxford University Press
Co-editors: Gabriele Abels, Johanna Kantola, Emanuela Lombardo and Henriette Müller
This volume provides the first comprehensive evaluation of the European Commission under President Ursula von der Leyen (2019-2024) from a gender perspective. It will study the Commission’s quest for gender+ equality in terms of policies and politics, its exercise of leadership and response to the multiplicity of crises, as well as its impact on the symbolic, descriptive, and substantive representation of women in the European Commission and the Union, more broadly.
Credit: European Commission
Women Opposition Leaders: Pathways, Patterns, and Performance
Special Issue, Politics & Governance, 2023, 11(1)
Co-editors: Sarah C. Dingler, Ludger Helms and Henriette Müller
This thematic issue provides the first comprehensive overview of women opposition leaders and their performance. Setting the stage for a new research agenda, this special issue integrates theoretical and empirical insights at the intersection of three distinct research areas: political opposition, political leadership, and gender and politics.
Applying a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, this collection of articles captures the diversity of women opposition leaders, their career trajectories, and their exercise of leadership across different political regimes and world regions, including the OECD countries, Belarus, the Pacific Islands, Indonesia, South Korea, Uganda, and the supranational European Parliament.
Credit: Politics and Governance
Women & Leadership in the European Union
Oxford University Press, 2022
Co-editors: Henriette Müller and Ingeborg Tömmel
This volume is the first comprehensive analysis of women's ascendance to leadership positions in the European Union as well as their performance in such positions. It provides a new theoretical and analytical framework capturing both positional and behavioral leadership and the specific hurdles that women encounter on their path to and when exercising leadership.
The volume encompasses a detailed set of single and comparative case studies, analyzing women's representation and performance in the core EU institutions and their individual pathways to and exercise of power in top-level functions, as well as comparative analyses regarding the position and behaviour of women in relation to men.
Credit: OUP
Women Leaders in the GCC States: Gender and Leadership in Global Perspective
From my arrival at NYUAD in 2015, I have incorporated a global, gender-centered perspective on Europe and the European Union into my research. This project focused on how leadership is conceptualized, accessed, and exercised, especially by women, across diverse political and cultural regions with an emphasis on the GCC states.
The Gulf states are a highly relevant region for interdisciplinary area studies and social science research, as the states’ multi-dimensional engagements with women’s leadership and empowerment challenge many key social science perspectives on the topic, whether concerning the “oil curse” theory, feminist political economy, or religious-cultural-centered analyses.
Design: Henny Müller
The Role of Leadership in EU Politics and Policy Making
Special Issue: West European Politics, 2020, 43(5)
Co-editors: Henriette Müller and Femke van Esch
European leaders have struggled to find common responses to the polycrisis the EU is facing. This crisis of leadership makes it urgent that scholars provide a better understanding of the role and impact of leadership in EU politics and policy making.
This collection of contributions addresses this need by strengthening old and building new bridges between the academic domains of European studies and leadership studies.
It opens with a discussion of the contested concept of leadership in the context of the European polity and its politics, challenging the conventional view that leadership is necessarily a matter of hierarchy. Moreover, it argues that rather than leaderless, the EU is an intensely ‘leaderful’ polity.
Credit: WEP
Political Leadership and the European Commission Presidency
Oxford University Press, 2020
My first monograph is the springboard for all my scholarship since I started my academic career at the Social Science Center and Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. Exploring the exercise of political leadership at the supranational level, the presidency of the European Commission has intrigued me since it features a curious mix of strong political functions, complex institutional powers, and demand for political leadership.
My study investigates why personal (pre-)dispositions retain their significance in governance beyond the state and what makes political leadership in the European Union successful. I concluded that the leadership of Commission presidents is central to the success of EU policy-making, and that successful incumbents strategically transfer political ambitions of a pan-European scope into consensual agendas (agenda-setting leadership) that can be effectively mediated through the European intra- and inter-institutional arenas of decision-making (mediative-institutional leadership) and gain support among European public spheres (public leadership).
Credit: OUP
— IN THE NEWS — IN THE NEWS — IN THE NEWS —
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NYUAD World & Society News: Inclusive Leadership Sparks Diversity of Thought
Everyone has an opinion about political leadership. Until recently, the voices, experiences, perceptions, and representations of a few men in their roles as leaders, advisors, practitioners, and scholars have dominated the debates about what makes an influential leader or constitutes successful leadership.
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Interview for WDR Ursula von der Leyen - Wie weiblich ist Europa?
Ursula von der Leyen – wie weiblich ist Europa?
Ursula von der Leyen ist es gewohnt, sich gegen Männer durchzusetzen. Nur einmal sind ihr die Gesichtszüge nach einem Affront entglitten. Sabrina Fritz mit einer quasi-feministischen Bilanz der Europapolitik von der Leyens.Ursula von der Leyen - How feminine is Europe?
Ursula von der Leyen is used to standing up to men. Only once did her features slip after an affront. Sabrina Fritz with a quasi-feminist assessment of von der Leyen's European policy.WDR 3 Mosaik 16.07.2024 04:07 Min.
Available untile 16.07.2025 WDR 3 -
Interview with Dr. Fatou Bensouda
Henriette Müller (Assistant Professor of Gender, Governance & Society) has recently interviewed the first female Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Her Excellency Dr. Fatou Bensouda, as part of a new initiative entitled ‘Women in Diplomacy’ introduced by LSE IDEAS, Foreign Policy Think Tank. The initiative’s mission is to address women’s continued underrepresentation in diplomacy and foreign affairs. As part of it, LSE IDEAS has launched a podcast series that brings together researchers, practitioners, and women leaders of diplomacy and international organizations, to explore how policy-making processes can produce more gender-sensitive policy outcomes. The podcast featuring the interview with Dr. Bensouda, as well as other episodes of this series, are available here. -
New Book Review: Women and Leadership in the European Union (OUP, 2022)
Here you will find the latest review of my co-edited book Women and Leadership in the European Union (together with Ingeborg Tömmel) by Petra Ahrens in Gender (2023, 2, pp. 148-150). -
New Book Review: Political Leadership and the European Commission Presidency (OUP, 2020)
Here you will find the latest review of my book Political Leadership and the European Commission Presidency by Buket Osztas in Perspectives on Politics (2023, 21(1), pp. 409-310). -
Online Book Talk: Women and Leadership (April 25, 2023) in the European Union
European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), European ParliamentSpeakers: Henriette Müller and Ingeborg Tömmel
Discussant: Michelangelo Vercesi
Moderator: Gabriele Umbach -
TROUW (Dutch Newspaper, April 30, 2022)
Romana Abels, Niemand besefte dat Brussel een kanon had binnengehaald [Nobody realized that Brussels had brought in a cannon]Book Review on “Women and Leadership in the European Union“ (co-edited by Henriette Müller and Ingeborg Tömmel)
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NYUAD Student Leadership Program (Pilot Study)
Janice Liu, “Preparing Future Leaders,” November 30, 2021 in World and Society, www.nyuad.nyu.edu