National Foundation of Political Science

The Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques (Sciences Po) in France is a fully-fledged, self-governing research university specialized in the social-economic sciences and the humanities which enrolls some 10’000 students per year, including 40% of foreign students from more than 130 countries. Sciences Po is the leading research university in the social sciences in France with 60 full-time professors, 190 researchers, 80 foreign professors invited each year and 300 academic partnerships with universities around the world. Sciences Po is home to a doctoral school offering 7 graduate programs. Based on a multi-disciplinary approach, it associates and combines skills and know-how from the different social sciences – in particular economy, history, political science and sociology and the humanities. Today, 17 of the research teams of Sciences Po have been involved in FP6, and 20 in FP7.

In LIVEWHAT, research work is conducted by the Centre for Political Research (CEVIPOF). CEVIPOF at Sciences Po (CEVIPOF), a Sciences Po-CNRS joint research unit (UMR 7048), is a leading European research center in social science. CEVIPOF’s purpose is to study political behavior, forces and institutions as well as new trends and issues shaping political life. Keeping alive, its traditional mission of studying elections, parties and political groups established by André Siegfried in the early 20th century and developed later by François Goguel, the CEVIPOF has opened up to new areas of study such as media, ideologies, racism, xenophobia and the politics of cultural identity, social activism, gender, governance and policy analysis, as well as political philosophy and the history of ideas. The Centre brings together almost 30 senior scholars active in research as well as teaching, with various backgrounds in social and human sciences. CEVIPOF has also stood out as the leading institution in France for the treatment and analysis of ESS data, producing a number of valuable works on individuals’ values, attitudes and political choices.

Members of the French team

Manlio Cinalli is Research Director at Sciences Po (CEVIPOF) and principal investigator of the French team in LIVEWHAT. He also worked at the University of Geneva, Columbia University, the University of Oxford, and the University of Leeds. He was Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute and holds a PhD in Political Science from the Queen’s University of Belfast. Drawing upon comparative and multi-methods research, his publications include work on comparative political behaviour, the politics of ethnic relations and integration, citizenship, exclusion, network analysis, unemployment, welfare and multi-level public policies. He has delivered scholarly work under a number of large comparative projects such as UNEMPOL (EU FP5), ASYPOL (UK ESRC), DELIBNET (British Academia), LOCALMULTIDEM (EU FP6), YOUNEX (EU FP7) and EURISLAM (EU FP7). He is currently directing the French projects for LIVEWHAT (EU FP7) and PATHWAYS (ORA ANR) as well as the Network for Citizenships Studies (together with Marco Giugni).

Anne Muxel is a Research Director at Sciences Po (CEVIPOF), CNRS. Her research focuses electoral participation, political behavior and abstentionism. In particular, she studies the younger generations, their attitudes to and relationship with politics. She is currently working on social and political identities among young people, electoral panels, using longitudinal surveys – cohort and panel analysis. She has been project leader for the French part of the EUYOUPART (EU FP5), developing high-quality instruments for the comparative measurement of political participation of young people in Europe.

Didier Chabanet is a Senior Research Fellow working at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon (ENS-LSH). He also worked at the University of Oxford (Saint Antony’s), at the European University Institute, and other universities and institutions in France, China, Spain and the UK. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Sciences Po Lyon, France. His research activities are mainly focused in the field of Social Movements, European Integration, Public Policies and Civil Society. He has previously engaged in a number of European projects such as UNEMPOL (EU FP5), LOCALMULTIDEM (EU FP6), YOUNEX (EU FP7).

Thierry Vedel is Research Fellow (CNRS) at CEVIPOF. He is also an associate researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute. His work focuses on three research themes: changes in political communication in industrialised countries; relations between the internet and politics; the regulation of the media in the context of globalisation. He coordinates the Mediapolis project entitled “Information politique et citoyenneté à l’ère numérique” which is supported by the French Agence nationale de la recherche. He is co-chair of a CNRS work group entitled Démocratie électronique (DEL), which operates under the umbrella of the TIC (Information and Communications Technologies and society) research group. He has contributed to several international projects the most recent of which includes the Network of Excellence “E-participation” supported by the EU.

Steven M. Van Hauwaert is an F.S.R. post-doctoral researcher at the Institut de Sciences Politiques Louvain-Europe, Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) and a research fellow in the comparative project PATHWAYS (ORA+ ANR). He received his PhD from Sciences Po Paris in 2013 and also holds degrees from Marquette University (USA) and the University of Antwerp (BE). He has previously held positions as an NU Fellow at Northwestern University, a Visiting Researcher at the University of Amsterdam and a Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher at the University of Vienna. His current research is two-fold. On one hand, his on-going research analyses the apparent multidimensional right-wing shift (Verrechtsing) of politics and society throughout the past three decades. On the other hand, he also studies different forms of inequality both within and between representation and participation. In addition, he is currently working on a number of side-projects, which include gender inequalities in political participation, the conditional relationship between party attachment and ideological volatility, the connection between conspiracy theories, fear and the FN vote in France and the systematic underestimation of the far right party vote in public opinion surveys. His most recent teaching commitments at Sciences Po include courses at both the BA- and the MA-level, primarily focusing on quantitative methods and different subfields of comparative politics. He is currently also engaged in a number of comparative projects such as PATHWAYS, LIVEWHAT (EU FP7) and PARTIREP (BSP IAP).

Cecilia Santilli is a PhD student in social anthropology at the Aix-Marseille University and at the University ‘La Sapienza’ in Rome. In her doctoral research « Access to health care and migration policies in Europe. The journey of Sub-Saharan migrants, asylum seekers suffering from AIDS and hepatitis B. A comparative analysis between France and Italy» she examines immigration and health public policies adopted in France and Italy for irregular migrants. Her main research interests include social policies, migration and solidarity actions in a comparative perspective. She is currently working as a research assistant of the French team on the LIVEWHAT project and collaborating on the ‘TransSOL’ project.