Biography
Daniela Heimpel is a political scientist, specialising in European studies. Her research focuses on citizenship education, European citizenship, democratic innovations, transnational democracy, pluralism, and European integration. In her dissertation, she investigated the idea of European citizenship education and critically analysed EU education policies and discourses in this area. She also co-directed a collaborative research project on ‘Challenges of Pluralism’ in contemporary liberal societies in Europe and North America. Her publications include, among others, the edited volume “Les défis du pluralisme : au-delà des frontières de l'altérité” (with S. Taher, PUM, 2018) and the monograph “Former des démocrates transnationaux ? L'UE et l'éducation à la citoyenneté européenne” (EUB, 2025).
At the EUI, Daniela works on citizen participation in Europe. In particular, she is interested in experiments in deliberative and participatory democracy at the EU level. She investigates whether, how and when participation in such transnational experiments can enhance the capacity of the involved citizens to take part in Europe’s transnational democracy and foster European citizenship education in practice. The project includes two case studies: the Conference on the Future of Europe (2021-2022) and the European Citizens’ Panels organised by the European Commission since 2022. Daniela is part of the Democratic Odyssey team.
Before joining the EUI, Daniela was a postdoctoral researcher and co-director of the research group ‘The State, Norms, and Political Conflicts’ at the Centre Marc Bloch. Previously, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Montreal Centre for International Studies (CÉRIUM) and as a research associate at the Institute for Sustainability Studies in Potsdam (RIFS). She holds a PhD in Political Science from the Université de Montréal and the Université de Nantes (2021).