DIDIER CALUWAERTS
Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the VUB. His research interests include deliberative and participatory democracy. He was previously a post-doctoral researcher of the FWO at the VUB and a Democracy Fellow at the Harvard Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. His PhD (2011, VUB) dealt with deliberative democracy in divided societies and was awarded the 2012 ECPR Jean Blondel PhD award. He is also the winner of the 2010 ECPR Dirk Berg-Schlosser award, and co-organizer of the G1000 citizens' summit (2011).

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JEAN-BENOIT PILET

Professor of Political Science at the Université libre de Bruxelles. He works on elections, electoral system, political parties and representation. He is the co-author of Faces on the Ballot; The Personalization of Electoral Systems in Europe (with Alan Renwick) and The Politics of Political Party Leadership in Comparative Perspective (with William Cross).

 

SERGIU GHERGHINA
Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the Department of Politics, University of Glasgow. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Leiden University (2012). His research interests lie in party politics, legislative and voting behavior, democratization, and the use of direct democracy. His authored and co-authored works were published in journals such as American Journal of Political Science, Comparative European Politics, Democratization, East European Politics, European Union Politics, Government and Opposition, Journal of Legislative Studies, Party Politics or Political Studies.

 

VINCENT JACQUET
Received his PhD (FRESH F.R.S.-FNRS) in political science at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. He graduated from the Université de Liège. His research interests are participatory and deliberative democracy, political participation and local politics. His PhD thesis investigates citizens’ refusal to take part in deliberative mini-public and criminal juries.

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DIMITRI LEMAIRE

Studied environmental management in Buenos Aires between 1996 and 2001. From 2002, he refocused his activities in Europe and gradually specialized in public speaking and coaching business. He worked in both Germany and Belgium for the public and private sector. In 2009, he became Assistant to the Vice-President of the European Parliament and was responsible for the establishment of participatory mechanisms within the institution as well as for communication. In 2014, Dimitri left the European institutions to co-found Inventio Group.

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CRISTOPH NIESSEN
Holds a Master degree in Political Sciences from Université catholique de Louvain (UCL) in Belgium and has worked on deliberative mini-publics and their relation with stakeholders. He has researched issues of federalism and minority rights. He also holds a Master in Political Science at Central European University (CEU) in Hungary, focusing on Constitutional Politics and Nationalism Studies.

 

​MIN REUCHAMPS
Professor of political science at the Université catholique de Louvain and co-ordinator of the methodology for the G1000 in Belgium. He graduated from the Université de Liège and Boston University. His teaching and research interests are federalism and multi-level governance and political sociology as well as participatory and deliberative methods. He has published ten books and edited volumes on these issues. He has also recently co-edited the special issue The Future of Belgian Federalism with Kris Deschouwer for Regional and Federal Studies and his latest edited volume is Minority Nations in Multinational Federations: A comparative study of Quebec and Wallonia (London, UK: Routledge, 2015). He is the president of the French-speaking Belgian Association for Political Science (ABSP).