Prof. C.T. van Ham (Carolien)
Professor - Empirical Political Science
Heyendaalseweg 141
6525 AJ NIJMEGEN
Postbus 9108
6500 HK NIJMEGEN
Carolien van Ham is Professor of Empirical Political Science at Radboud University Nijmegen.
Her research focuses on democratisation and autocratisation, legitimacy and democratic erosion, and electoral integrity and electoral fraud. Van Ham has published in the European Journal of Political Research, Public Opinion Quarterly, Electoral Studies, West European Politics, Government and Opposition, Democratisation, among others, and was co-editor of the book Myth and Reality of the Legitimacy Crisis: Explaining Trends and Cross-National Differences in Established Democracies (Oxford University Press, 2017).
Van Ham is also involved in the international advisory board of the Electoral Integrity Project (University of East Anglia UK and RMC Canada), and is a member of the board of the Dutch Voter Research Foundation (SKON) and the scientific council of the Centre for Parliamentary History, as well as a member of the KHMW, The Young Academy, and the Social Sciences Council of the KNAW. In Nijmegen, she initiated the interdisciplinary research network Sustainable Democracy, which focuses on research into democratic erosion and democratic innovation.
Before coming to Nijmegen, van Ham worked as a (senior) lecturer in comparative political science at the University of New South Wales in Sydney (Australia, 2015-2019), as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Twente (2012-2014) and as a postdoctoral researcher at the Varieties of Democracy project (Sweden, 2014). She obtained her PhD in 2012 from the European University Institute in Florence (Italy).
Van Ham has received various grants and awards for her research, including the DECRA award (2015-2017) from the Australian Research Council for the project Getting elections right?, the NWA project REDRESS – Revitalised Democracy for Resilient Societies, and the Fonds Staatsman Thorbecke project Enough is enough? Tipping points in the relationship between economic inequality and support for democracy.