Prof Natasha Wunsch is Professor of European Studies at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Her research interests lie at the intersection between European Politics and Comparative Politics. She examines how European integration shapes the political transformation process of aspiring member states and how, in turn, democratic backsliding and the rise of illiberal trends among member states affect cooperation at the European level. Moreover, she is the Principal Investigator of the research project “Democratic Backsliding in Eastern Europe: Sequence, Strategies, Citizens,” funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation from 2019-2024 at the Center for Comparative and International Studies, ETH Zurich. Natasha is the Chair of the ECPR Standing Group on the European Union.
Elżbieta Korolczuk is an Associate professor in sociology working at Södertörn University in Stockholm and American Studies Center, Warsaw University. Her research interests involve: social movements, civil society, politics of reproduction as well as right-wing populism and mobilizations against “gender”. Her work appeared in journals such as Signs, Social Politics and European Journal of Women’s Studies. She published two volumes on social movements and civil society in Central Eastern Europe: Civil Society Revisited: Lessons from Poland co-edited with Kerstin Jacobsson (Berghahn Books, 2017), Rebellious Parents. Parental Movements in Central-Eastern Europe and Russia co-edited with Katalin Fábián (Indiana University Press, 2017), and an edited volume Bunt kobiet. Czarne Protesty i Strajki Kobiet [Women’s Rebellion. Black Protests and Women’s Strikes] co-authored with Beata Kowalska, Jennifer Ramme and Claudia Snochowska-Gonzalez (European Solidarity Centre, 2019). Most recent publication is a monograph Anti-gender Politics in the Populist Moment written with Agnieszka Graff (2022, Routledge). She is also a commentator and a long-time women’s and human rights activist.
Nathalie Brack is Associate Professor of Political science at the Cevipol, Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium and Visiting Professor at the College of Europe (Bruges, Belgium). Her research focuses on the European Parliament, Euroscepticism, radical right parties and conspiracy theories. Her new research project deals with post-truth politics and the role of political parties. She is also involved in the Horizon Europe project Red Spinel on dissensus about the rule of law and liberal democracy. She co-edited Theorizing the crises of European Integration (Routledge 2021) and is the co-editor of Sovereignty in Conflict. Political, Constitutional and Economic Dilemmas in the EU (Palgrave, 2023).
Johanna Kantola is Professor of European Societies and their Politics in the Centre for European Studies (CES) in the University Helsinki. She was Professor of Gender Studies at the Tampere University (2017-2022). She obtained her PhD in Politics at the University of Bristol in 2004 and became Docent in Politics at the University of Helsinki in 2007. She is currently the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Gender and EU Studies in the University of Tübingen, Germany (2022-2025). She is the director of the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator grant funded Gender, party politics and democracy in Europe: A study of European Parliament’s party groups (EUGenDem) project (2018-2023). She is the PI at University of helsinki for the Horizon Europe CCindle project (2022-2026) studying feminist responses to anti-gender opposition in Europe. She has previously led the Academy of Finland (2016-2020) and University of Helsinki Research Funds (2015-2017) funded research project Gender and Power in Reconfigured Corporatist Finland (GePoCo). She has published extensively on gender and politics; EU actors, institutions, governance including the European Parliament and its political groups; Gender equality policies and intersectionality; and Democracy, equality, anti-gender politics. She is the series editor of Palgrave's hugely popular Gender and Politics Series with Sarah Childs.
Amandine Le Bellec (PhD) is a lecturer in politics and associate-researcher at Sciences Po Paris. Her research focuses on the inclusion of gender and sexuality into the Common European Asylum System from 1999 to 2020, with a specific focus on LGBTI asylum seekers. More specifically, she looks at processes of politicization and their impact on EU asylum policymaking and the protection of foreigners in Europe.
Anna Elomäki is Academy Research Fellow at Tampere University, Finland. Her research focuses on the intersections between gender, politics and the economy. She has studied, among other things, the gender impacts and practices of economic policies and economic governance at national and EU levels, the economization of gender equality policy, and gender budgeting. Her current research focuses on the implementation of EU economic governance in member states from the perspective of gender and democracy.
Ben Crum is Professor of Political Science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His research focuses on questions of democratic theory and institutional change in the European Union. Recently, he co-edited with Alvaro Oleart Populist Parties and Democratic Resilience (Routledge 2023) and published on the election of the European Commission President in theJournal of European Public Policy, on the accountability of European Commissioners in national parliaments in theJournal of Common Market Studies, and on the politicization of inter-parliamentary relations inWest European Politics andThe Journal of Legislative Studies.
Dr Cherry Miller is a Lecturer in British and Comparative Politics at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK, where she co-convenes the honours course: Feminist Perspective on Politics. Her research encompasses areas such as gender and institutions, contemporary developments in parliaments and legislatures, and the methodological development of parliamentary ethnography. She is author of Gendering the Everyday in the UK House of Commons: Beneath the Spectacle (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). Before her Lectureship at the University of Glasgow, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher on the EUGenDem project at Tampere University, Finland.
Georgina Waylen is WJM Mackenzie Professor of Government at the University of Manchester. She has written and researched extensively on various aspects of gender and politics and political economy. Her books include Engendering Transitions: Women's Mobilization, Institutions and Gender Outcomes (OUP 2007) which was awarded the Victoria Schuck prize in 2008, and she was lead editor of the Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics (OUP 2014). She has published in a range of journals including most recently Review of International Political Economy, Journal of European Public Policy and Social Politics. Between 2012-17 she held a European Research Council Advanced Grant on Understanding Institutional Change from Gender Perspective and until 2023 she was a Co-Director of the Feminism and Institutionalism International Network (FIIN).
Iyiola Solanke, Jacques Delors Professor of European Un-ion Law, University of Oxford/ Fellow of Somerville College.
Iyiola Solanke is Jacques Delors Professor of European Un-ion Law at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Somer-ville College. She was previously Professor of European Un-ion Law and Social Justice at the University of Leeds Law School and the Dean for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion for the University.
She has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Ha-wai’I School of Law, Wake Forest University School of Law and Harvard University School of Public Health. Professor Solanke is a former Jean Monnet Fellow at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and was a Fernand Braudel Fellow at the European University Institute. She is an Academic Bencher of the Inner Temple.
Her research focuses on discrimination and institutional change, in relation to both law and organisations.
Jennifer M. Piscopo is Associate Professor and Chair of the Politics Department at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. She is also Honorary Professor in the Department of Politics, International Relations, and Philosophy at Royal Holloway University of London, where she will join fulltime as a Professor of Politics and Gender on 1 September 2023. Her research on gender, elections, and policymaking has appeared in over 20 peer-reviewed journals, including The American Political Science Review, The American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and Politics & Gender. She appears regularly in the international press as a commentator and columnist. She also consults routinely for international organizations, recently completing two flagship reports for UN Women on women’s leadership and gender-responsive policymaking during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jonathan Chibois is a research associate at the Laboratory of Political Anthropology (EHESS/CNRS) in Paris. His research work focuses on the transformation of political sovereignty in Europe, which he seeks to address from an empirical and interpretative perspective. He is particularly interested in the social transformations brought about by the changes in the relationship between citizens and parliamentary institutions brought about by digital technologies on the one hand, and in the ways in which MPs and their entourage carry out their daily parliamentary work on the other.
Laura Landorff is an EU scholar. Her research focuses on the European Parliament, civil society, and sociological approaches in EU studies. Laura received her PhD in political science from the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS), Germany. Currently, she works at the Department of Political Science at Lund University, Sweden. At Lund University, she is part of the research programme on ‘Civil Society Elites?’ (https://www.civilsocietyelites.lu.se/) and studies the interaction and integration of civil society elites with other elite groups.
Nadia E. Brown is a professor of Government and the director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Georgetown University. Professor Brown is the author of the award-winning Sisters in the Statehouse: Black women and Legislative Decision Making. She is the co-author of 2022 Ralph Bunche Book award, Sister Style: The Politics of Appearance for Black Women Political Elites with Danielle Lemi. Professor Brown is the lead editor of Politics, Groups and Identities.
Dr Paul Copeland is Reader of Public Policy at the School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London.
His research focuses on two intertwined strands: 1) The political economy of European integration, particularly with respect to the politics and policy making of the EU and its competence in employment, social policy, the Single Market and economic governance; 2) and the UK’s relationship with the EU, Brexit, and the role of the British media in constructing Euroscepticism. In the field of EU studies, Paul’s work explores the evolution and challenges of constructing a European social dimension to counter balance market-led integration. In particular, he has analysed the ideological tensions and autonomy inherent within EU employment and social policy in the context of the EU’s liberalising and deregulatory market-driven mode of governance. He has extensively knowledge of the governance tools used in the field, as well as their effectiveness to create policy change within the EU’s Member States. He is currently researching into the significance of the EU’s latest initiatives in poverty reduction, which have been launched in the context of the European Pillar of Social Rights.
His recent monograph ‘Governance and the European Social Dimension’ was shortlisted for the 2021 UACES best book prize. His research has featured in leading journals such as the Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of European Public Policy, Comparative European Politics, British Politics, European Law Journal and Public Administration.
Petra Ahrens is Academy of Finland Research Fellow at Tampere University, Finland, for her research project “On the road to gender-sensitive parliaments? Gender Equality and Democratic Practices in the Finnish, German, and Polish Parliament Compared” (GSParls) (2021-2026). Previously, she was Senior Researcher in the ERC-funded research project “Gender, party politics and democracy in Europe: A study of European Parliament’s party groupsEUGenDem) at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Tampere University, Finland. Beforehand, she held positions as Assistant Professor at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (2014-2016), as Marie-Curie-Sklodowska-Fellow and Guest Professor at the University of Antwerp, Belgium (2017-2019), and as Guest Professor for Gender and Diversity at the Free University Berlin (2021). Her research focuses on gender policies and politics in the European Union and its institutions, gender equality in Germany, gender-sensitive parliaments, and transnational civil society. Alongside articles, she is the author of Actors, Institutions, and the Making of EU Gender Equality Programs (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), co-editor, with Lise Rolandsen Agustín, of Gendering the European Parliament. Structures, Policies, and Practices (Rowman & Littlefield / ECPR Press, 2019), and co-editor, with Anna Elomäki and Johanna Kantola, of European Parliament’s Political Groups in Turbulent Times (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).
Sandrine Roginsky is Professor in the School of Communication, which is part of the Faculty of Economic, Social, Political Sciences and Communication, at UCLouvain (Belgium). She is currently vice-dean of this Faculty. She holds a PhD in Sociology & Social Sciences (Queen’s University Belfast). In her research, she specializes in EU institutions, and more specifically in the European Parliament, looking at how digital tools are integrated in policy work – with a focus on communication as part of policy work. This interest requires taking an interdisciplinary approach bringing together ethnography, political science, communication studies, sociology and political geography.
Serena D’Agostino is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Migration, Diversity and Justice (CMDJ) at the Brussels School of Governance (BSoG), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). She is the coordinator of the VUB Strategic Research Programme Enhancing Democratic Governance in Europe (EDGE). Her research interests lie at the crossroads of (political) intersectionality, activism/social movements and minority politics and rights, with a focus on Romani (gender) politics and Roma (women’s) rights in Europe. Her work has been published in Politics, Groups, and Identities, the European Journal of Politics and Gender, the International Feminist Journal of Politics, and the Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies, among others.
Stefanie Wöhl is Professor of Politics and held the EU Jean Monnet Chair “Diversity and Social Cohesion in the European Union” from 2019 to 2022 in the degree program “European Economy and Business Management” at the University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna.
She obtained her doctoral degree from the Philipps University Marburg, Germany, in 2006, working in the research group “European Integration in the process of Globalization”. She held an Assistant Professor position at the University of Vienna from 2006 to 2010, was a Research Fellow in the Einstein Research Group on Crisis headed by Prof. Nancy Fraser at the John F. Kennedy Institute at the Free University Berlin (2011–2013) and has held Guest Professorships at the University of Vienna (2013) and the University of Kassel, Germany (2015). She joined the University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna in 2015 as Head of the ‘City of Vienna Competence Team on European and International Studies’.