Knowledge and Democratic Accountability in Policy-Making

Heather Grabbe is a Senior Fellow at the economic think tank Bruegel, as well as Visiting Professor at University College London and KU Leuven.

Her research focuses on the political economy of the European Green Deal and how the climate transition will change the EU’s international relationships and external policies.

Heather is a political scientist who has served as director of the Open Society European Policy Institute in Brussels, and earlier as deputy director of the Centre for European Reform in London. She conducted academic research at the European University Institute, Chatham House, Oxford and Birmingham universities, as well as teaching at the London School of Economics.

From 2004 to 2009 Heather was senior advisor to then European Commissioner Olli Rehn, responsible in his Cabinet for policy on the Balkans and Turkey. She has written extensively on the political economy of EU enlargement, the EU’s external and neighbourhood policies, and the evolution of new policy agendas in climate, digital and the rule of law. Her columns appear in the Financial Times, Politico and other quality media.

She earned her PhD at Birmingham University, and her first degree in politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University, where she also had a post-doctoral fellowship.

Claudio Radaelli is Professor of Public Policy at University College London (UCL), on leave at the European University Institute where he is Professor of Comparative Public Policy at the Florence School of Transnational Governance.

He is the Chief Editor of the International Review of Public Policy. His research interests include the politics of expertise, the role of narratives in public policy, regulatory analysis, and theories of the policy process.

Diane Stone is the Chair of Global Policy in the Florence School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute. She researches and publishes on questions concerning the influence of ideas and expertise on governance, the political economy of higher education; the ‘new diplomacy’ of non-state actors; the study of policy networks; international philanthropy; policy transfer and translation; think tanks and policy advice.

Her most recent publications this academic year are a chapter on ‘The World Bank and Knowledge Networks’ and an article on ‘Knowledge Diplomacy’. The forthcoming publications include a Handbook chapter on ‘10 features of transnational administration’ and an article on the ‘transdisciplinary study of transnational governance’.

Gaby Umbach is Part-time Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies of the European University Institute where she leads the Global Governance Programme’s research area ‘Knowledge, Governance, Transformations’.

At the EUI, she is also Principal of the Interdisciplinary Research Cluster on Expert Knowledge and Authority in Transformative Times. She is Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute, non-resident Visiting Fellow of the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), Adjunct Professor at the Universities of Innsbruck and CIFE/LUISS Guido Carli and Visiting External Examiner at the Department for Public Policy, University of Malta. Since 2022, she is Associate Editor of Cambridge University Press Data & Policy and Area Advisor for Policy and Literacy for Data of the Data for Policy Community.

Her research focuses on the interaction between knowledge, evidence, data, and governance. This includes measurement and the use of statistics as a governance technique; expertise and data/evidence literacy in policy-making; anticipatory governance; and sustainable development.

Stella Ladi has a dual affiliation at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and Panteion University in Athens. She is the co-editor of European Political Science of ECPR. At Panteion University she also serves as Director of the Centre for Political Research. At QMUL, she is a member of the leadership team of the Global Policy Institute.

From January to July 2024, she was an Academic Visitor at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. She is research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) and Research Associate at the Hellenic Observatory, LSE. She previously worked as a lecturer at University of Sheffield and University of Exeter. Stella has also been a Research Fellow at the Barcelona Institute of International Studies (IBEI) and has acted as a public policy expert at the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of the Aegean, Greece.

Her research interests include crisis and the EU policy, Europeanisation, multilateralism, global public policy and transnational administration and the role of experts in public policy. She has published in journals such as Journal of European Integration, EPS, JCMS, Policy & Society, Regulation & Governance, Public Administration, West European Politics, New Political Economy, Comparative European Politics and Political Studies Review. She is the co-author of Capitalising on Constraint: Bailout Politics in Eurozone Countries (2021, Manchester: Manchester University Press) with Moury, C., Cardoso, D. and Gago, A.