Department Member, Nijmegen School of Management, Political Science
Institute for Turkish Studies, Research Department
PhD Student ‘Repertoires of Democracy: The Transfer of Democratic Practices
Thesis Title: Explaining cross-national and cross-issue variation in referendum use in the EU Member States
About
I am a Ph.D. student at the Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. From 2002 to 2006, I studied political science at the Free University in Amsterdam (VU), where I wrote my MSc. thesis ‘Framing Turkey: The Role of the Media in National Public Discourses on Turkey’s EU-Membership’. From 2006-2007 I was a junior research fellow at the Scientific Government Council (WRR) in the Hague, where I participated in the projects ‘Europe in the Netherlands’ and ‘Dutch Development Policy’. My current Ph.D. research on the determinants of referendum use in the EU member-states, is part of the NWO-funded “Repertoires of Democracy” project. Within this research, I aim to outline referendum practice in the EU member states, and to examine how possible cross-country variation in this respect can be explained, thereby focussing on both national and supranational factors, as well as discursive dynamics. I have written on Dutch public opinion towards Turkey’s EU Accession; direct democracy and transnationalism; and the use of EU-related referendums in the member states.
