Pepijn Corduwener is Associate Professor in the Department History and Art History, at the section of Political History. He teaches in the BA History and the MA History of Politics and Society and is active in the university's strategic theme Institutions for Open Societies as a member of the Programme Team.

He researches the history and present-day state of democracy in Western Europe. His work focuses on three interconnected lines of research.

The first line of research focuses on the relationship between the democratic crisis and far-reaching changes in media regulation in Europe since the 1970s. With support from an NWO SGW Open Competition XS grant (2024), he investigated how democracies in the past responded to technological innovations in the media, such as radio and commercial television. On this subject he published this article. Since 2026 he has led a research project funded by an NWO Vidi grant (2026–2031) on the interaction between democratic crisis and media regulation in Europe. More information on this can be found under the heading Research.

The second line of research concerns the history of political parties in the twentieth century, with particular attention to the crisis of catch-all parties and centrist parties in a comparative Western European perspective. With an NWO Veni grant he investigated the decline of the centrist parties in Western Europe. On this theme he published various articles in historical journals and articles in political science journals, as well as the book The Rise and Fall of the People's Parties. A History of Democracy in Western Europe since 1918 (Oxford University Press, 2023). In 2026 a revised Dutch translation appeared under the title Opkomst en neergang van de Volkspartijen. Democratie in naoorlogs Europa (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2026).

A third line of research focuses on the history of political institutions and regimes, in particular on the interaction between political ideas and institutional renewal. This line includes, among other works, his first book The Problem of Democracy in Postwar Europe (Routledge, 2017; paperback 2018), , the edited volume  1989 and the West. Western Europe since the End of the Cold War, edited together with Eleni Braat, and this article  on Allied occupation and regime change in Italy and Germany after 1945.

Finally, he specializes in Italian politics and history and, together with Arthur Weststeijn, wrote Het Italiaanse Experiment. Een nieuwe geschiedenis van modern Italië (Amsterdam: Prometheus 2020) and edited with Lucia Bonfreschi (Roma Tre) this special issue of the Journal of Modern Italian Studies.