Aleksandra Polak – research associate at the Department of Political Research Methodology, Faculty of Political Science and International Studies, University of Warsaw; Ph.D. candidate at the University of Warsaw’s Doctoral School of Social Sciences in the field of political science and public administration. Currently employed on the international research project QUALREP: The Quality of Women’s Political Representation (European Research Council Synergy Grant), coordinated by King’s College London. Previously, she was the project leader for “Differences in the Descriptive Representation of Women in the European Parliament Across Member States: A Comparative Study” (2022–2024), funded by the National Science Center (grant no. 2021/41/N/HS5/02539) and carried out at the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies, University of Warsaw. She has also worked on the research projects EnTrust – Enlightened Trust in Governance (Horizon 2020) and SOLID: Sovereignty, Solidarity, and Identity in the European Union (ERC Synergy Grant). She has presented her research at conferences including the European Conference on Politics and Gender in Ljubljana (2022) and in Ghent (2024), at the Joint Sessions of Workshops at the Robert Schuman Center, European University Institute in Florence, and at the Southern Political Science Association Annual Conference in St. Pete Beach, Florida, United States. She is a graduate of the University of Warsaw, the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, and the College of Europe in Natolin.
Research interests
women’s political representation, electoral systems, political parties, gender equality, the political system of the European Union, the European Parliament