Prof. C.T. van Ham (Carolien)

Professor - Empirical Political Science

Prof. C.T. van Ham (Carolien)
Visiting address

Heyendaalseweg 141
6525 AJ NIJMEGEN

Postal address

Postbus 9108
6500 HK NIJMEGEN

Working days Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday

Carolien van Ham is Professor of Empirical Political Science at Radboud University Nijmegen.

Her research focuses on legitimacy and political representation, democratization and authoritarianism, electoral integrity and fraud, and the connection between democracy and human rights. Van Ham has published in the European Journal of Political Research, Electoral Studies, West European Politics, International Political Science Review, Government and Opposition, Democratization, as well as numerous book chapters, and co-edited Myth and Reality of the Legitimacy Crisis: Explaining Trends and Cross-National Differences in Established Democracies (Oxford University Press, 2017).

She is also a research associate at the Australian Human Rights Institute at UNSW Sydney, a senior research fellow at the Electoral Integrity Project at Sydney and Harvard University, and a research associate at the Varieties of Democracy Institute at the University of Gothenburg .

Before coming to Nijmegen, van Ham worked as a (Senior) Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the University of New South Wales (Australia, 2015-2019), as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Twente (Netherlands, 2012-2014), and as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden, 2014). She obtained her PhD in 2012 at the European University Institute in Florence (Italy).

Van Ham received various grants and awards for her research, including the Australian Research Council's Discovery Early Career Research Award (2015-2017) for the project Getting elections right?

In Nijmegen she will set up and expand a Centre for Democracy & Representative Government, in which the research of Nijmegen political scientists into democratic renewal and political (and socio-economic) representation is brought together. Topics such as democratic legitimacy, political mobilization and populism, democratic reform and the changing role of political parties are part of this research agenda.

Publications

Research grants and prizes

Curriculum Vitae

Ancillary activities

About
Carolien van Ham researches democratic legitimacy and political representation. She also publishes research on electoral fraud and the integrity of elections: How can countries ensure that their voters are able to trust their political system?