Bitter-Sweet Democracy?

Karen Celis is full professor affiliated to the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) Department of Political Sciences. She co-chairs the VUB Center for Democratic Futures (DFUTURE) and RHEA, the Centre of Expertise on Gender, Diversity and Intersectionality, and, until last year, the VUB Academic Advisor on Equality Policy. She conducts theoretical and empirical research on the democratic quality of political representation from an intersectional perspective. She leads political science and interdisciplinary research programmes and projects about gender, diversity and intersectionality; about resentment and polarization; and about democratic design and innovations.

Virginie Van Ingelgom is a F.R.S.–FNRS Senior Research Associate and professor of Political Science at the Institut de Sciences Politiques Louvain-Europe, UCLouvain. Her research interests focus on democracy and legitimacy at the subnational, national, European, and global levels, on citizens’ attitudes towards European integration, on policy feedback, and in qualitative and mixed methods. Her previous work has been awarded the Jean Blondel Ph.D. Prize by the European Consortium for Political Research (2012) and an ERC Starting Grant (Qualidem, 2017-2023).

Heidi Mercenier was a postdoctoral researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussels and the Université Catholique de Louvain. She was also a Visiting Professor at the Université Saint-Louis–Bruxelles. Heidi Mercenier’s main research interest lies in citizens’ relationships with politics, especially the EU, as well as how current digitalisation processes affect such relationships. She has published in leading political science journals such as the Journal of European Public Policy and Politique européenne, and she has co-edited two collective volumes. She completed her PhD at the Université Saint-Louis–Bruxelles, worked as a lecturer at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and served as a visiting fellow at the Center for European Studies (ARENA) of the University of Oslo.

François Randour is a guest lecturer at the Department of Political, Social, and Communication Sciences at the University of Namur. His research and teaching interests focus on EU decision-making processes, regional, national, and European parliaments, multi-level governance, federalism, and political discourse analysis. He has been a visiting fellow at Sciences Po, Mannheim University, and the University of Antwerp, and a guest lecturer at the Université Catholique de Louvain, the University of Antwerp, Sciences Po, and the University of Namur.