Laura Chaqués Bonafont is Professor of Political Science at the University of Barcelona, and research fellow at the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). She is leading the research group “Quality of Democracy” (www.Q-dem.com) aimed to analyze the interrelation between the governmental, parliamentarian and traditional and social media agendas across time, issues, countries and levels of government in Spain in a comparative perspective. The project establishes a link between policy dynamics research and other areas of concern within political science, mainly political representation and the quality of democracy in multilevel systems of governance. It also provides new tools for the development of quantitative measurement of policy dynamics. She is the author of different books like Agenda Dynamics in Spain (Palgrave 2015 with Frank Baumgartner and A. Palau) or Redes de Políticas Públicas (2004) among others. Her work also appears in academic journals like Comparative Political Studies, The British Journal of Political Science, West European Politics, Political Communication, or the Journal of Public Policy among others. At present her main research interests are the analysis of agenda dynamics in a comparative perspective paying especial attention to the role of gender differences, and the social media, and interest groups mobilization in multilevel systems of governance. To do that, she collaborates actively with the comparative agendas project (www.comparativeagendas.net), aimed to provide new tools for the quantitative analysis of agenda dynamics across time, countries, policy issues and levels of governance, and the Comparative interest group survey (www.cigsurvey.eu). In 2014 she won the ICREA prize.
Anna M. Palau is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Constitutional Law and Political Science at the University of Barcelona. She finished her post-graduate studies at the University of Essex (UK) where she got an MA in Politics (with distinction) and received her PhD from the University of Barcelona. She has been research student at the University of Washington (USA) and Sciences Po (Bordeaux), and has participated in different research projects financed by national and European institutions. She has mainly done work in the analysis of policy dynamics, particularly in the food safety sector, although her research interests include more broadly the study of agenda setting and the role of mass media as political actor. At present, the analysis of the European Union as agenda setter and its relationship with other levels of government is one of her main research interests. Her research has been published in Comparative Political Studies, West European Politics, Journal of Public Policy and Journal of Legislative Studies among others. (apalau@ub.edu).
Investigador post-doctoral Juan de la Cierva en el grupo Calidad de la Democracia (https://q-dem.com/) y miembro del grupo de investigación Democracia, Elecciones y Ciudadanía.Su investigación se centra en actitudes y comportamiento político con énfasis en la protesta. Su trabajo se basa en métodos de ciencia social computacional, experimentos y análisis estadístico de datos de encuesta.Su investigación actual se centra en actitudes hacia las organizaciones sociales en perspectiva comparada, en el potencial de la protesta sobre la igualdad política y en las emociones en la política contenciosa. Para ello utiliza técnicas de big data con datos de prensa, medios sociales y rastros digitales para el estudio de la protesta.Adicionalmente trabaja en técnicas de inteligencia artificial, las cuales han sido aplicadas en la identificación de eventos de protesta, de casos de corrupción local en la prensa y de emociones en la política.Recibió su título de doctor en Ciencias Políticas por la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (2014) y es licenciado en Ingeniería por la Universidad de los Andes (1998).Es miembro de redes académicas como el Comparative Interest Group Survey , Text Mining of Political and Legal Texts (POLTEXT) y Polarized Democracies in Comparative Perspective, y el ECPR Standing Group on Political Methodology .Ha liderado el trabajo de campo de proyectos europeos en temas de encuestas a organizaciones políticas, diseño e implementación de experimentos de laboratorio y encuesta, investigación basada en contenidos de prensa y encuestas a manifestantes en la calle. Ha sido responsable de la producción, recolección, gestión y análisis de datos de redes sociales, huellas digitales, contenidos de prensa, encuestas y datos espaciales.
Luz Muñoz Marquez is a post-doctoral researcher of the Spanish Policy Agendas Project. She finished her PhD in Political Science at University of Barcelona (2012). Her bachelor is in International Relations (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, with honors). She has been visiting researcher at the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology of the University of Newcastle (2013), Faculty of Law at the Universidad Iberoamericana (2013) and the Center for American Politics and Public Policy, University of Washington (2009). Her teaching activities include political science, public policy, collective action and interest group politics at the University of Barcelona. Her current research focuses on interest groups politics, with special interest on NGOs and advocacy groups. Other topics are agenda setting and government-opposition dynamics. (luzmunozma@ub.edu).
Leire Rincón is a research assistant of the Spanish Policy Agendas Project since October 2015. She holds a BSc in Politics and International Relations from the University of Bath (UK). Her bachelor dissertation engaged with Colin Crouch’s theory of Post-Democracy, examining in what ways Post-democratic conditions are present in Spain and analysing the role of the M15 movement in tackling such conditions. Currently, Leire is studying a MA in Political Analysis and Institutional Advising at the University of Barcelona (UB) (leiremaria@ub.edu).
Ferran Davesa is a doctoral researcher at the Institute for European Studies (IES) / Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) from October 2013. His doctoral thesis analyses the impact of Internet-based participatory governance on EU's democratic deficit with a special focus on EU youth policy. Davesa is part of the joint research programme "Evaluating Democratic Governance in Europe" (EDGE). From 2008 to 2013, Davesa was a research assistant at the Spanish Policy Agendas Project (SPAP). Davesa holds an MA in International Relations from Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI) and a BA in Political Science from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). Recently, his academic research has focused on the foundations of good governance as regards corruption perception, collective action and political communication. http://www.ies.be/users/ferran-davesa
Andreu Casas is a graduate student in the Department of Political Scienceat the University of Washington. He is also a La Caixa Fellow and a research fellow at the Center for American Politics and Public Policy. His research interests are political participation and representation, with special focus on the use of text and other novel data sources to study legislative politics and electoral systems. Prior to starting graduate school, he received a B.A. in political science from the University of Barcelona and he worked as a research assistant of the Spanish Policy Agendas Project.
