About me

Born in Bulgaria, Elitsa holds a BSc in International Economics and Management from Bocconi University and MA in European Studies from KU Leuven.

Since 2013 she has worked in the consulting arm of the LSE – LSE Consulting – working on a diverse range of projects focusing on the impact of trade agreements on sustainability issues, engaging in stakeholder consultations and analysis of EU Trade Policy. She is also a member of the European Network on Inclusive Approaches to Trade Policymaking (ENIATP); Governance and Economic Integration through Free Trade Agreements (GIFTA); University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES); and the International Studies Association (ISA).

Research topic

The New Political Economy of Trade: understanding the treatment of non-tariff measures in European Union Trade Policy

My research aims to understand the deliberative processes behind the negotiability of non-tariff measures and regulatory issues in EU Trade Policy. Non-tariff measures have become a central topic to the debate of how international trade rules and domestic regulatory choices are to co-exist. I provide a theoretically and empirically grounded analysis of the policy process behind what I term negotiability or the distance between what agents perceive as negotiable in the coordinative and communicative discourse.

Through a combination between theory-induced and data-induced thematic and discourse analysis I identified which factors affect negotiability. The empirical material uses a combination of primary sources, official EU documents, and in-depth elite interviews. Building on existing ideational theories, I show how two different understandings of non-tariff measures as regulatory protectionism and regulatory heterogeneity affect their treatment and lead to discrimination across partners. Drawing on existing theories about ideational change, I also show the meeting between the trade and regulatory regimes have brought slow gradual change in EU trade policy through inconsistencies, ad hoc processes, and experimentation thus creating space for discontinuities in neoliberal ideas.

Teaching experience

Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, July 2016
Department of International Relations: International Political Economy, 2015-16; 2016-17;
Department of Government: Government, Politics and Public Policy of the European Union, 2015-16.
LSE Custom Programmes, July 2016: International Political Economy Study Tour for the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM).