Liesbet Hooghe is the W.R Kenan Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and recurring Robert Schuman Fellow at the EUI, Florence.

From 2010 to 2015, she was co-leading with Gary Marks an ERC-funded project on the causes and consequences of multilevel governance.

In 2017 she received the Daniel Elazar Distinguished Federalism Scholar Award of the APSA.

The central theme of her research is multilevel governance — the incidence, sources, and implications of the dispersion of authority downwards, upwards, and sideways of central (national) government. Much of her research involves Europe, but she has developed a keen interest in regional authority in Latin America and Asia. She also works on international organisations.

Francisco Torres is Visiting Senior Fellow in European Political Economy at the LSE. He is also a Visiting Professor of European Political Economy at Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics and a PEFM Research Associate of the European Studies Centre at St Antony’s College, Oxford University.

He is also EU Steering Committee Member of ECPR and a Research Associate of EUSA’s Political Economy Section.

His research interests include European integration, institutional change, economic reform in EMU and EU and global governance.

Michael S. Lewis-Beck is F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa.

He has authored or co-authored over 280 articles and books covering, among others, comparative elections, election forecasting, political economy, and quantitative methodology.

Luís Amado graduated in Economics from the Technical University of Lisbon, before becoming an advisor to the Portuguese National Defence Institute and Visiting Professor of Georgetown University.

He was Minister of Foreign Affairs of Portugal between 2006 and 2011. He also served as Minister of Defence (2005-2006), as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation (1997-2002), and as Deputy Secretary of State of Internal Administration (1995-1997).

He is a member of the Advisory Board of CIRSD – Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development – and a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

[source: Wikipedia]

Paulo Rangel has been a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) since the 2009 European elections. Upon entering the EP, he was chosen as one of the vice-presidents of the European People’s Party Group (EPP).

Rangel has since been serving on the Committee on Constitutional Affairs. In that capacity, he drafted the parliament’s 2010 report on the framework agreement between the European Commission and the Parliament, which demanded that MEPs should be allowed to participate in international negotiations that lead to accords that need parliamentary backing. In 2014, he became the committee’s vice-chairman. In addition, he was elected chairman of the parliament’s delegation for relations with Brazil.

[source: Wikipedia]

Marina Costa Lobo is Principal Researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, and a member of the Board of IPP – Instituto Políticas Públicas.

She is also the coordinator of the Portuguese Voting Behaviour component of PASSDA – Portuguese Archive of Social Science Data.

In 2016 she was awarded an ERC Consolidator grant for MAPLE – Measuring and Analysing the Politicisation of Europe before and after the Eurozone crisis.

Her research covers the role of leaders in electoral behaviour, political parties and institutions.

Ignacio Jurado is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of York, and a Doctor Member of the Juan March Institute (Madrid).

His dissertation, ‘The Politics of Distribution’, was awarded with the 2012 Arthur McDougall Fund Prize for the best dissertation on elections, electoral systems or representation.

His research focuses on the political consequences of the economic crisis and globalisation, attitudes towards the EU or the euro, and electoral geography.