Dr. Jowanka Jakubek-Lalik is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Warsaw. She is a public and administrative law scholar and senior international expert specialising in the rule of law, public administration reform, and the institutional dimensions of national and international security. Her work focuses on how legal and administrative systems are used as instruments of power, resilience, and accountability in democratic and transitional states.
She combines academic research with over fifteen years of hands-on experience in EU- and donor-funded reform programmes across Central and Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans, Ukraine, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia. As a senior expert for projects implemented by the European Union, OECD SIGMA, UNDP, USAID and international consultancies, she has advised governments on civil service reform, administrative procedure, judicial independence, integrity systems, decentralisation, and crisis-resilient governance. Her work includes legislative drafting, strategic planning, institutional diagnostics, and high-level policy advice in politically sensitive and security-relevant environments.
As Senior Fellow, Dr. Jakubek-Lalik contributes expert analysis on the intersection of law, governance, and security, with particular attention to state capacity, institutional capture, hybrid threats, disinformation, and the resilience of public administration and justice systems. She is a frequent international commentator and speaker, bringing an empirically grounded, comparative, and policy-oriented perspective to debates on democratic governance and security in Europe and its neighbourhood.
