Professor Anika Gauja is a Professor in the Department of Government and International Relations within the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. She earned a Bachelor of Economics in Social Sciences (Honours) and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Sydney, followed by a PhD in Politics from the University of Cambridge. Throughout her career at the University of Sydney, she has progressed from Lecturer to Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor, Director of Research Development for the Social Sciences, and Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Professor Gauja has held visiting fellowships at the Australian National University, the Universities of Sheffield and Exeter in the UK, Universite Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, and Sciences Po in Paris. In January 2023, she commenced a three-year secondment as Executive Director for the Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences at the Australian Research Council. She serves as the Lead Editor of the Australian Journal of Political Science.

Professor Gauja's research focuses on political parties, political participation and representation, elections, democratic decline and resilience, campaign finance, and party regulation, with a comparative emphasis on Australia and other democracies. Her key publications include the monographs Political Parties and Elections: Legislating for Representative Democracy (2016), The Politics of Party Policy: From Members to Legislators (2013), and Party Reform (2017); edited books such as Party Rules? Dilemmas of Political Party Regulation in Australia (with Marian Sawer, 2016) and Watershed: The 2022 Australian Federal Election (with Marian Sawer and Jennifer Sheppard, 2022); and peer-reviewed articles including 'An alternative to the party? Australia’s movement for community independents' (2025) and 'Decline, adaptation and relevance: political parties and their researchers in the twentieth century' (2021). She has secured Australian Research Council funding, including a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award and Discovery Projects, and was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2025. Her scholarship informs parliamentary inquiries, policy reports, judicial decisions, and media discussions on democratic processes.

Professional Email: anika.gauja@sydney.edu.au