My name is Irene Palacios and I recently joined FASoS as a postdoctoral researcher in the project ‘Democratic Representation across countries, context and time’ led by Prof. Christine Arnold. I hold a PhD. from the European University Institute (Florence) with a dissertation entitled ‘Making Democratic Attitudes Work: The effect of institutions on Europeans’ aspirations and evaluations of democracy’.
The dissertation was supervised by Professor Hanspeter Kriesi, and the examining board was composed of Prof. Stefan Dahlberg (University of Bergen), Prof. Laura Morales (Sciences Po) and Prof. Alexander H. Trechsel (European University Institute). My research interests focus on democratic attitudes, electoral behavior, quality of democracy and quantitative methods. Prior to my PhD studies, I worked as a research associate at the Spanish National Research Council and as a research assistant in the Spanish team of the European Social Survey.
Joining the ‘Democratic Representation across countries, context and time’ project will give me the opportunity to focus on my primary research interests: the puzzle of representation in consolidated democratic systems. That is, to what extent democratic institutions are responsive to public preferences, why some institutional contexts represent citizens’ political demands better than others, and why the interests of some citizens are favored at the expense of the others. Analyzing these and other issues from a cross-national and longitudinal perspective will allow us to answer the timeless question: how well do representative democracies represent?
I am really excited about this new research opportunity in my career and about joining FASoS’ vibrant academic community!
