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Visiting Researchers

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Monika de Silva

Monika de Silva is a political scientist and legal scholar working at the intersection of international relations and EU politics. She works in the Gender and Diplomacy Program at the University of Gothenburg. Her doctoral research concerned diplomacy in gender and sexuality politics. She holds a PhD in political science (University of Gothenburg), an advanced MA in EU international relations and diplomacy (College of Europe) and a Master of Law (University of Warsaw). She gained professional experience in the European External Action Service, the Council of Europe, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland. Her research interests include Europeanness, management of difference, and international justice. Her research has been published in International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, Journal of European Public Policy, and Politics & Governance.

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Nuno Morgado

Nuno Morgado is a political scientist, specialized in geopolitics with regional focus in the post-Soviet Space, Far East Asia, and South America. Currently, his research agenda is focused on state’s grand strategy through the comparison of capabilities, analysis of systemic constraints, and assessment of the role of power perceptions. He employs deductive research design, applying the model of neoclassical geopolitics to selected cases. Other than that, he is also developing AI tools for geopolitical analysis (LLM4Geopolitics). He is currently an Assistant Professor at Corvinus University of Budapest, a Visiting Scholar at the Universities of Vienna, São Paulo, and West Virginia University, and a SPIRe-Affiliated Scholar (UCD). From 2013 until 2024 he was an Adjunct Professor of Strategic Studies and Foreign Policy at Charles University, Prague. His broad research interests include Geopolitical Analysis, IR theories, and Strategic Studies.

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Toine Paulissen

Toine Paulissen is a Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) PhD Fellow for Fundamental Research based at the KU Leuven. His research, under supervisor prof. dr. Bart Maddens and co-supervisor prof. dr. Steven Van Hecke, focuses on party behavior in referendum campaigns, particularly from a political finance perspective. Other research interests include comparative and European politics, digital campaigning, and campaign messaging. He obtained a Master in Western Literature, as well as a Master in Comparative and International Politics, from the KU Leuven, and is an alumnus of the Europaeum Scholars Programme, a two-year multi-disciplinary, multi-university, and multi-locational policy and leadership course. At SPIRe, he will work with prof. dr. David Farrell and look to collaborate with other researchers from the Centre for Democracy Research as well as the Connected_Politics Lab.

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Mauricio Torres

Mauricio Torres is a lawyer from Universidad de Chile and holds a Master’s degree in Legal Argumentation from Universidad Diego Portales. He’s a PhD in Law candidate at Universidad de Chile and holds the rank of assistant professor at the same university. His PhD research focuses on deliberative democracy and the quality of deliberation, specifically studying the quality of deliberation within the Chilean constitutional process from 2020-2023. His research interests also include argumentation, legal argumentation, political deliberation, and overall political philosophy and democratic theory and innovation. He has taught courses on introduction to law, legal analysis, theory of legal system, theory of the sources of law, legal argumentation and competitive debate at different law schools in Chile.

UCD School of Politics and International Relations (SPIRe)

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