Political representation remains one of the central challenges facing contemporary democracies. This PhD position is part of the FNRS- and FWO-funded WEAVE project, Co-Designing Inclusive Political Representation, a bottom-up European research collaboration jointly conducted by UCLouvain and Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
The project explores how political representation can be reimagined and redesigned from the perspective of people experiencing socio-economic precarity in Brussels.
The project combines democratic theory, qualitative longitudinal fieldwork, participatory co-design and community-engaged research in Brussels. Participants from structurally underrepresented groups collaborate with researchers throughout the research process to analyze experiences of representation and co-develop proposals for democratic reform.
The research follows an iterative abductive design, characterized by a continuous dialogue between empirical fieldwork and theoretical development.
Within this broader project framework, the successful candidate will develop an original doctoral dissertation while contributing to an innovative and internationally connected research programme with both academic and societal relevance.
