Class of 2025
It is with great pleasure that we present the Class of 2025. Every year around 20 PhD-candidates from universities in the Netherlands and Belgium start with our PhD training program. Below the first PhD Candidates of the Class of 2025 introduce their PhD projects to you, throughout this year, more PhD candidates that join our training program will be featured on this page.
Katherine Arena
University of Groningen
My PhD project explores the multi-level governance of the twin transition by focusing particularly on the role of transnational city networks as sites and actors of policy co-creation within the European Union. Using a comparative study of two EU-based city networks, the research will investigate the functioning of EU MLG in these contexts. It will analyze both real and potential instances of co-creation to identify challenges and solutions.
Eva Chavand
University of Groningen
I am a PhD candidate in the Chair Group ‘European Politics and Society’ at the University of Groningen. My research focuses on the dynamics and drivers of discourses regarding minorities, especially Sinti and Roma, at local, national, and EU level. I am particularly interested in the interplay between party strategies, public attention, and policymaking. Across Europe, Sinti and Roma experience diverse social, economic, and political conditions, which shape both their representation and the ways they are discussed in political and public discourse. To analyze these dynamics, I combine qualitative and quantitative methods to contribute to research on minority politics and multi-level governance in the EU.