David Vitale – Co-Principal Investigator

Dr David Vitale leads the UK team. He is Associate Professor at the University of Warwick, School of Law, with interdisciplinary and comparative research interests focusing on public trust in government, public law, and social rights. David has recently published a monograph with Cambridge University Press (“Trust, Courts and Social Rights: A Trust-Based Framework for Social Rights Enforcement”) and has published articles in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Legal Studies, and Global Constitutionalism, among others. He holds law degrees from the UK (LSE), the US (NYU), and Canada (Osgoode), as well as a degree in psychology (University of Toronto). He has also worked as a judicial clerk to the Justices of the Court of Appeal for Ontario and the Supreme Court of Israel, has held various research positions globally, and has practised as a litigator in Canada.

Michael Pal – Co-Principal Investigator

Dr Michael Pal leads the Canada team. He is Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law, researching primarily the law of democracy, comparative constitutional law, and election law. He is the author of over 27 academic articles and is currently at work on a book manuscript on the comparative constitutional law and politics of election commissions. Michael has been influential on law reform in Canada and internationally, and has advised election commissions around the world. He has a J.D. and doctorate in law from the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto, and an LL.M. in Legal Theory from NYU. He has also previously clerked at the Court of Appeal for Ontario and worked in a national law firm in Toronto.

Odile Ammann – Co-Principal Investigator

Dr Odile Ammann leads the Switzerland team. She is Associate Professor at the University of Lausanne, Faculty of Law, Criminal Justice, and Public Administration. Her main areas of research are constitutional and administrative law, public international law, EU law, comparative law, and legal theory. Odile has a monograph forthcoming with Cambridge University Press which compares and critically evaluates the constitutional framework that applies to legislative lobbying in Europe and the United States. She holds a PhD in Law from the University of Fribourg, and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School. She has also been a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School, the University of Oxford, the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po Paris, and the Georgetown University Law Center.

Sonia Anaid Cruz Dávila – Postdoctoral Researcher

Dr Sonia Anaid Cruz Dávila is a postdoctoral researcher on the UK team. She holds a PhD in law from King’s College London, a master's degree in analytic philosophy from the Universitat de Barcelona, Spain, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, Mexico. She was previously a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security & Law, in Germany. Sonia’s research interests lie at the intersection of constitutional, democratic, and legal theory, as well as moral and political philosophy. She is currently interested in three different, but related, issues: (i) the compatibility between constitutionalism and populism, (ii) the degree to which the exercise of discretion by civil servants in general, and the head of government in particular, may be justifiable, and (iii) the existence of alternative sources of democratic legitimacy, beyond those granting authority to the legislature (e.g., the democratic credentials of the judiciary).

Chiara Valsangiacomo – Postdoctoral Researcher

Dr Chiara Valsangiacomo is a postdoctoral researcher on the Switzerland team. Her research interests include political philosophy, normative democratic theory, democratic innovations, and alternative legislatures, as well as theories of political representation and sortition. Chiara holds a PhD in Political Science and an MA/BA of Arts in Social Sciences from the University of Zurich. Before joining the project, she conducted an independent research project, "Let the future be liquid. Democracy in the twenty-first century" at the School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, Ireland, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The project, which resulted in several publications and a book manuscript, aimed to develop a unified theoretical and normative framework that can be used to evaluate liquid democratic institutions and compare them with other democratic innovations. She has held visiting positions at the University of Konstanz and University College Dublin.