Democracy and Populism – Team and Contributors

Dr. Oliver Schmidtke is director of the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria. He is a UVic European Studies Scholar and a former Jean Monnet Chair in European History and Politics in the Departments of History and Political Science at the University of Victoria. He received his PhD from the European University Institute (EUI, Florence) in 1995. He then worked at Humboldt University Berlin (1995-1998) and held a J.F. Kennedy post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University. Since 1999 he has been at the University of Victoria. During this time he was a research fellow at the University of Bonn, a Fernand Braudel Senior Scholar at the EUI (2007) and Marie Curie Fellow at Hamburg University (2011). Oliver is author or editor of fourteen books and has published over 80 articles in scholarly journals and edited volumes. Over the last 10 years he has been a driving force in promoting European and EU Studies at UVic and in Canada: From 2005 to 2008 he was the Director of European Studies at UVic and from 2004-2006 he served as the president of the European Community Studies Association Canada. In addition, he was the Domain Leader for Metropolis BC (2008-2012) and the leader of the Canada-wide research group for the Canada-Europe Transatlantic Dialogue project (2007-2013) organizing comparative transatlantic research in the fields of migration and citizenship studies.

Since 2004, Beate has managed the EUCAnet.ca projects. She has managed several projects that were funded by the European Commission (yearly up to 1.5 million Euros) and implemented New Media in the field of culture and education, in close collaboration with the Council of Europe and other European networks (Germany, Italy, Poland, Netherlands). Currently, she develops networking and outreach strategies in the field of European Studies in Canada.

Fazıla Mat is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Victoria in the faculty of Political Science under the supervision of Dr. Oliver Schmidtke. Fazıla holds an MA degree in Humanities from the University of Milan and she has worked for 12 years as a journalist and commentator for Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa (OBCT) and other Italian and Swiss media. Her research interests include populism, migration and EU-Turkey relations.

Julianna Nielsen is an MA Student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria, where she also completed her BA in history and political science. Her master’s thesis examines the right of seeking asylum in light of the externalization of Canadian and European border enforcement practices. Her interests are in the politics of memorialization, toponyms, and de-statuing in relation to not only populist movements, but also to decolonial and anti-racist activism.

Pablo Ouziel obtained his PhD in political science in 2016 from the University of Victoria. By standing within the tradition of public philosophy, the core of his work is centred on excavating networks of individuals governing themselves in numerous ways that supersede our current structures of representative government.