dr. Patrick A. Mello

Patrick Mello’s research proceeds along two complementary lines. The substantive line examines the domestic politics and politicisation of international security: why democracies differ in their involvement in military operations, how parliaments shape decisions on the use of force, and how foreign policy changes under geopolitical transformation, most recently in work on Germany’s Zeitenwende and European responses to Russia’s war against Ukraine. The methodological line advances set-theoretic and multi-method approaches, in particular Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) as a set-theoretic approach to descriptive and causal inference.

As Co-Investigator, Mello is currently involved in one active funded research project, “NEST: Navigating the Storm: European Political Contestation in Geopolitical Transformation” (2023–2027; Starter Grant, Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; €300,000). The project examines how Russia’s war against Ukraine is reshaping European politics, from the fiscal consequences of the crisis to the foreign policy orientations of states, parties, and voters, and the strategies of representation and justification that European politicians adopt in response. Previously, he served as Co-Investigator in the now-concluded research project “International Bureaucracies as Runaway Agents? How Organizational Structure Affects Agency Slack” (2017–2022; German Research Foundation, project 370183851; €488,878). It investigated under what conditions the secretariats of international organizations deviate from their mandates and act in ways unintended by their principals, using fuzzy-set QCA across 27 international bureaucracies. He also obtained an earlier workshop grant for “Parliaments and Security Policy” (2016–2018; German Foundation for Peace Research; Co-PI; €10,740), which funded an international authors’ workshop at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt and led to a guest-edited special issue of the British Journal of Politics and International Relations (2018) and a lead article in Sicherheit und Frieden (2017).

Since 2025, Mello serves as methodological consultant to the NIH-funded project “Putting Implementation Into Context” at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania (project budget USD 2.8 million). The project aims to better understand the complex interplay between contextual and intervention features in care delivery for patients that undergo invasive mechanical ventilation. The QCA component is part of a multi-method research design that involves nine researchers across five domains.

At VU Amsterdam, Mello teaches and coordinates courses across the political science curriculum, including "Qualitative Research and Methods in Political Science" for the Bachelor's Political Science, "Applying Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Political Science" and "Qualitative Comparative Analysis" for the Master's in Political Science, and courses on international security and collective security in the LLM programme Law and Politics of International Security, which he co-directs. He holds the University Teaching Qualification (BKO, 2024) and chairs the Programme Committee of the BSc Political Science. His teaching has been recognized with the Teaching Excellence Award of the University of Erfurt (2018 and 2021).

Beyond the VU, Mello teaches research methods internationally: an annual week-long QCA course at the Summer School in Social Sciences Methods at Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano (since 2016), earlier courses at the ECPR Summer School (2014–2017), and invited methods workshops and masterclasses at universities and institutions across Europe and beyond, including in Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Poland, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He has also taught a guest course on “The Politics of Multinational Military Operations” at Univerzita Karlova, Prague (2019).

Doctoral supervision: Mello has served on the examination committees of five completed PhD projects (T. Fernández-Maya, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2025; B.P. Toulabi, VU Amsterdam, 2021; S. Wakhu, University of Erfurt, 2020; P. Álamos-Concha, Université catholique de Louvain, 2018; T. Haesebrouck, Gent, 2016) and as external reviewer for the midway evaluation of P.M. Waaler, University of Oslo, 2024. He is currently co-supervising doctoral projects at VU Amsterdam (R. Sonneveld, with W. Wagner) and the University of Antwerp (W. Piot, with B. Cambré).

• Foreign Policy Analysis (Oxford University Press) | Oxford | Editorial board member | 2018-01-01 - present
• Contemporary Security Policy (Taylor & Francis) | London | Editorial board member | 2018-01-01 - present
• Ethics Committee, German Political Science Association | Berlin | Elected committee member | 2022-11-24 - 2027-10-31
• International Studies Quarterly (Oxford University Press) | Oxford | Editorial board member | 2024-01-01 - present
• Chair of the Committee on Dissertation Completion Fellowships, International Studies Association | Storrs, Connecticut | Commissaris | 2025-03-01 - present
• University of Pennsylvania (Perelman School of Medicine) | Philadelphia, PA | Adviseur | 2026-01-01 - 2029-05-31

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