The project is a collaboration between 5 equal partner institutions. Angela Bourne and Tore Vincents Olsen are in charge of the day-to-day coordination within and between three teams: the Western Europe Team, the Central and Eastern Europe Team, and the Political Theory Team.
The Western European Team includes Angela Bourne and two PhDs. Angela Bourne will develop the theoretical framework for the empirical case studies of initiatives opposing populists at both domestic and supranational levels. She will also take the overall leadership and coordination of the project's empirical research. PhD 1 (Mathias H. Nicolaisen) will complete Swedish and Danish case studies, and PhD2 (Francesco Campo) will do Spain and Italy. The Central and Eastern European Team includes Aleksandra Moroska-Bonkiewicz and two post-docs. Aleksandra Moroska-Bonkiewicz will undertake the Polish case studies. Postdoc 1 (Franciszek Tyszka) will undertake the Hungarian, and Postdoc 2 (Bénédicte Lamound), will undertake the German case studies.
The Political Theory Team includes Tore Vincents Olsen, Anthoula Malkopoulou, a PhD student and a postdoc. Tore Vincents Olsen, and Anthoula Malkopoulou examine the general relationship between populism and liberal democratic theory in light of the empirical case studies. Anthoula Malkopoulou will develop a theory-grounded normative typology of militant and procedural legal IoPs. PhD 3 (Patrick Nitzschner), supervised by Anthoula Malkopoulou, will investigate normative issues related to cultural responses to populism. Postdoc 3 (Juha Tuovinen) will analyze the legitimacy of free speech restrictions and of state regulation on parties and civil society organizations. Tore Vincents Olsen and Anthoula Malkopoulou will investigate the normative issues pertaining to different types of political responses to populist parties. Tore Vincents Olsen examines legitimacy of supranational intervention to respond to populists in domestic contexts.
The Consultative Committee, composed of seven academic experts and practitioners, provides scientific evaluation and facilitate dissemination of findings to ensure impact beyond academia. They will participate in sessions of the three project annual conferences. Academic members are Prof. Dr. Uwe Backes, Hannah Arendt Institute für Totalitarismusforschung, Technische Universität Dresden; Prof. Dr Joost van Spanje; University of Amsterdam; and Prof. Nadia Urbinati Columbia University, New York. Practioners are Professor Kaarlo Tuori, Member of the Venice Commission (and Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki); Jacopo Leone, Democratic Governance Officer, OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights and Prof. Dimitris Christopoulos, president of International Federation for Human Rights (and Professor of state and legal theory, Panteion University of Athens).