Projects
A sociology of postgenomic solidarity : European life insurance in the era of personalized medicine. KU Leuven
Boundaries Across Borders: A Comparative Cultural Sociology of the Millennial Professional-Managerial Class in Canada, Belgium, and the United States KU Leuven
The project aims to produce a comparative cultural sociological study of the millennial professional-managerial class in Canada, Belgium, and the U.S. More specifically, I will conduct interviews with professionals and managers based in Toronto, Brussels, and New York City – three “global cities,” with a reputation of attracting young expressivist cosmopolitans – in order to identify:
(1) The types, prevalence, and strength of the ...
Representations of Migration in a Transforming Europe: The Polarising Power of Migration as a Political Tool in Online Media and Political Discourses – What can we learn from the 2015 and 2022 refugee crises? KU Leuven
Gendering Political Exile: Women's political migrations to Belgium (1918-1958) (WOMENEXILE). University of Antwerp
Negotiating Group Identities in a Multicultural Society. Case: The Role of Mainstream Media, Discourse Relations and Political Alliances in Germany KU Leuven
This research on media portrayals of (ethnic/religious) minorities encompasses the fields of media sociology, media effects, political communication, multiculturalism, populism in the media and politicized uses of collective identities. It compares the political discourse (Bundestag plenary protocols) with the mainstream discourse (mainstream press) in Germany over the sample period of 2009-2015, and scrutinizes a ...
The political (in)significance of extreme weather events KU Leuven
Tackling the climate crisis in an appropriate way - making governments sign international climate agreements and letting citizens live up to them - proves difficult. A much-given explanation for this problem is the fact that many of the crisis' consequences are only about to happen in a distant future complicates making them visible and tangible in the present. However, extreme weather events (e.g. floods, heatwaves, hurricanes) might have ...
Caught in the Crossfire. A Study of the Quality of Political Debate on Democratic Legitimacy KU Leuven
Navigating identities in political news: An intersectional understanding of gendering in news coverage on women politicians Ghent University
This project studies gendered patterns in Flemish news coverage about women politicians, using an intersectional perspective. It focuses on (1) gendering in news output by means of a quantitative
content analysis, (2) women politicians’ experiences with intersecting power structures within political journalism (in-depth interviews) and (3) the ways journalists negotiate identity in the production of
news coverage (in-depth ...
The geographical strategy of parties in the candidate selection process: the Belgian political parties in the election of the Belgian Chamber (1987-2010) KU Leuven
When Belgian voters go to the polling booth on election day, they are presented with a set of candidate lists of different political parties. Voters know that they can either cast a list vote, which implies that they endorse the party list in its entirety, or they can cast an individual preferential vote for one or several candidates from the same list. What most voters are unaware of, however, is the amount of effort and preparation that ...