Vacancy for a PhD Research Fellow (Starting Grant) in Democratic Innovations

The Institute of Political Science at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain – ISPOLE) is hiring a PhD research fellow (starting grant) for one year to work on the Ostbelgien permanent citizen dialogue (OBM) funded via an ERASMUS+ Grant and the Horizon Europe SCALEDEM project funded via a grant from the European Commission.

Required profile

• Holder of a master’s degree in political science or a related field in the social sciences (that could be eligible for registering as a PhD student in the doctoral school of political and social sciences). Final-year students are encouraged to apply, provided that they obtain their MA-degree before the start of the position
• Good organisational and time management skills
• Ability to work both independently and in a team
• Native or near-native command of German (both spoken and written) and a professional command of English
• Solid methodological skills both quantitative and qualitative
• Familiarity with the Belgian multi-level system and the German-speaking Community of Belgium in particular is an asset
• The candidate must be eligible for a PhD research grant (in particular: not to have worked for more than one year at UCLouvain).

Offer

This is a call for applications for a PhD research grant for one year (may be renewed twice):

• Hiring scheme: 12-months contract of limited duration
• Working time: full time (100%)
• Funding: European Commission
• Salary: according to UCLouvain wage schemes (bourse de doctorat)

The researcher will become an active member of the UCLouvain team that is working on the Ostbelgien permanent citizen dialogue (OBM) and the research project “Scaling Democratic Innovations” (SCALEDEM). These projects offer a stimulating working environment in a dynamic and international research team.

The researcher will be based at the UCLouvain campus in Louvain-la-Neuve, where she/he will have an office and relevant administrative support. She/he will have no compulsory teaching obligations but will be allowed to engage in a limited amount of teaching if this is desired and judged appropriate for their academic development. She/he will be expected to contribute to collective work on the project, and to lead and publish collective research outputs. The position includes weekend and evening shifts in the German-speaking community.

UCLouvain implements an HR policy that promotes gender equality and is attentive to and respectful of diversity and equal opportunities.

The starting date is 1 September 2025.

The deadline for applications is 3 August 2025 (noon). After a first document-based selection round, the shortlisted candidates will be invited to submit a small assessment and discuss it with members of the team (during the first week of August) before a formal selection jury (on 18 or 21 August).

Interested?

Questions regarding the offer can be addressed to Dr. Min Reuchamps ([email protected]), Dr. Christoph Niessen ([email protected]) and Dr. Jehan Bottin ([email protected]).

Applications (only in English) should include:

• a letter of motivation
• a full CV
• a document written in English by oneself composed of:
• three samples of your writing (preferably single-authored publications) that demonstrate an excellent command of the literature on deliberative democracy

Please send the above documents via e-mail in one single PDF file entitled Application_Research_Assistant_[NAME] to Dr. Min Reuchamps ([email protected]) by 3 August 2025 (noon) at the latest. Applications submitted in any other way will not be considered.

Complaint mechanism:

Should you have a complaint regarding this vacancy and the selection process, please write to [email protected] at UCLouvain – ISPOLE.

Context of the projects

Ostbelgien permanent citizen dialogue (OBM) 

Since the turn of the century, deliberative democracy has increasingly been used by existing political institutions as a way to involve citizens in policy-making and, arguably, narrowing the gap between citizens and their representatives. However, such a sporadic use of deliberative democracy is unlikely to cure the democratic malaise in the long run because it touches too few people on too few issues in a systemic way. That’s why some scholars and activists argue for adopting permanent forms of micro-deliberative democracy. The German-speaking Community of Belgium (Ostbelgien) has paved the way in this direction, adopting in February 2019 a decree establishing a permanent citizen dialogue. Such an institutionalized deliberative process is a world première. It has the potential to overcome the criticism made to the existing practices of deliberative democracy. Yet, much will depend on a twofold endorsement – from the citizens and from the elected representatives –, which will yield legitimacy or not to this permanent dialogue.

Scaling Democratic Innovations (SCALEDEM)

SCALEDEM’s objective to unlock the uptake of democratic innovations born in R&I actions, in particular stemming from EU-funded projects. In particular, SCALEDEM will help researchers, practitioners, and policymakers assess opportunities and barriers for scaling democratic innovations along four dimensions: scaling high (impacting laws and policy), out (impacting greater more and new people), deep (impacting cultures and identities) and in (impacting processes’ quality). This will be achieved by developing a scaling infrastructure, including policy roadmaps and an actionable Compass for scaling democratic innovations, based on a Grounded Theory of Scaling. As an EU-funded Coordination and Support Action project, SCALEDEM put a strong emphasis on overcoming the fragmentation of knowledge, identify opportunities to increase synergies for capacity-building actions to policymakers, practitioners and researchers, and expand the societal and political impact of EU-funded research in the EU and countries from Global Europe. The project will deploy two ambitious Scaling Grounds in the forms of Twinning and Pilot Programmes. The Scaling Grounds test and encourage the uptake of democratic innovations by new end users, scaling the societal impact of those solutions further. Together with the Translation Hub, the Scaling Grounds form the backbone of the project’s scaling infrastructure: through generous cascade-funding, iterative feedback, networking opportunities and capacity-building mechanisms, they seek to expend the community of democratic innovations’ end-users to non-usual suspects and support the replicability and adaptability of these innovations in new operational environments.

UCLouvain is a key partner, in this Consortium of 13 partners led by the practitioner organization Missions Publiques (France). Other partner countries include Italy, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Italy, Slovakia as well as Colombia (associated partner). The postdoctoral researcher will be contributing more specifically to one of the project’s research work packages, on the development of a Knowledge-based Theory of Scaling.

In particular, the researcher will: 

• Contribute to the development of a grounded theory of scaling by analyzing conditions, barriers, and success factors for scaling democratic innovations across the four dimensions of scalability identified by the project. UCLouvain is responsible for the exploration of the “scaling out” dimension, which examines the potential for replication and dissemination of solutions beyond their original contexts, and of the “scaling in” dimension, which examines the internal quality process of a democratic innovation.
• Participate in the dissemination of the SCALEDEM project, joining the interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary community of practices establish and engage with a global community of end users (practitioners, policymakers and researcher) and nurture strategic partnerships with relevant R&I projects and initiatives.
• Support the implementation of the Scaling Grounds, by facilitating the replicability and adaptability of solutions through the winning and pilot programs.

Candidates will be working closely with international partners to achieve these objectives.

This vacancy is advertised conditional upon the final confirmation of the grant award.