Visiting Students and Postdoctoral Fellows
Academic year 2024-2025
September – November 2024
Clémence Deswert
PhD candidate
Centre de l’Étude de la Vie Politique (Cevipol), Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Clémence Deswert is a PhD student at the Centre d’étude de la vie politique (Cevipol) of the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). Her doctoral research focuses on the gendered mediation of political leadership in the discourse of the French press. She is also working on a study on sexism during the 2024 electoral campaign in Belgium. Her research interests include the relationship between gender and politics, political communication and the political representation of women.
August – December 2024
Bjarn Eck
PhD candidate
Centre d’e l’Éude de la Vie Politique (Cevipol), Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Bjarn Eck is a PhD student at the Université libre de Bruxelles. He also works within the Belgian interuniversity research project NotLikeUs. His research interests include affective polarization, voting behavior and public attitudes towards European integration.
Academic year 2023-2024
September – December 2023
Justin Robinson
PhD candidate
Department of Politics, University of York, England
Justin Robinson is a PhD candidate at the University of York (UK). His thesis focuses on emotional and behavioural responses to threats (particularly climate-related threats) and their implications for political attitudes and behaviour. More broadly, his work explores the psychological underpinnings of electoral and policy preferences. He holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Leeds and an MA in Social Research from the University of York.
Academic year 2020-2021
September 2020 – August 2021
Alex Mierke-Zatwarnicki
PhD Candidate
Department of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, U.S.A.
Alex Mierke-Zatwarnicki is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government at Harvard University where she researches the historical and contemporary development of political competition in advanced democracies. Her dissertation, in progress now, will combine quantitative text analysis and historical case studies to theorize the conditions under which political parties are most likely to appeal to group identities. She holds a B.A. from the University of British Columbia and an M.A. from the University of Toronto, both in political science.
Academic year 2019-2020
February – March 2020
Abelardo Gomez
PhD Candidate
Department of Political Sciences, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain
Abelardo Gómez Díaz has a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Ottawa; a Master’s in Public Relations and Communication from the Autonomous University of Barcelona; a Research Master’s in Political Science from Pompeu Fabra University; and a Master’s in Politics and Public Administration from the University of Konstanz, Germany. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in Political and Social Sciences at Pompeu Fabra University, with a special focus on mixed electoral systems.
Academic year 2018-2019
September – December 2018
Willy Atangana
PhD Candidate
Department of Political Sciences, University of Navarra, Spain
Willy Atangana studies the relation between society (social trust), economics (growth), and politics (win elections). Somehow, he is trying to prove that the three of them do not work at the same time, therefore, we will be talking about the democracy’s impossible trinity. He is a PhD Candidate at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain.
Academic year 2017-2018
April – June 2018
Ion Pagoaga Ibiricu
PhD candidate
Department of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute, Italy
Ion Pagoaga Ibiricu studies comparative territorial politics with a focus on secessionism and party system change. He holds a position as a PhD candidate at the European University Institute (EUI) since 2015 and has also been a visiting researcher at the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh.
February – May 2018
Dieter Stiers
PhD candidate
Centre for Political Science Research, KU Leuven, Belgium
Dieter Stiers is a PhD student of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) at the Centre for Political Science Research of KU Leuven. He is mainly interested in elections and electoral behaviour, with a specific focus on the causes and consequences of electoral volatility and the restrospective voting theory.
February 2018 – April 2018
Christian Schimpf
PhD candidate
Political Science, Graduate School of Economic and Social Sciences ,University of Mannheim, Germany
Christian Schimpf is studying populism, voting behaviour, and comparative public opinion. He has been a PhD candidate at the University of Mannheim’s graduate school since 2015 and has been a visiting scholar at Aarhus University (Denmark). He currently works as a data processing specialist with the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) Project at the GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences.