My name is Rozemarijn van Dijk and I am currently a PhD-researcher and teaching assistant at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. Besides being an academic, I am a big fan of bird watching, discovering (and more importantly, eating) cheeses, listening to podcasts and reading books. On this website I will give you a quick overview of my research and several other activities.

In 2013 I started as a student in the bachelor program Political Science at Leiden University, where I graduated cum laude. During the bachelor I did an internship at the The Netherlands Institute for Social Research. During this internship I discovered that doing social research was my passion. Therefore, I enrolled in the research master Political Science and Public Administration in 2016. In 2019 I obtained my master degree (cum laude). Currently I am doing my PhD at the University of Antwerp about how political parties recruit politicians and how aspirant candidates develop ambition. My supervisors are Prof. dr. P. Meier and Prof. dr. J. J. M. Van Holsteyn.

Besides doing my PhD, I am also a teaching assistant. Apart from providing assistance to professors in the organization of their courses, I regularly give guest lectures about Gender and Politics and Intra-party Democracy and teach a seminar about Gender and Politics. In the last year I also supervised a bachelor thesis classes on gender and lobbying and LGBTQ interest groups.

Since social sciences is broader than publishing academic papers, I try to translate research to society as well. I do this by writing blogs and opinion articles.

Dissertation project

My dissertation project is inspired by the puzzle of the underrepresentation of women in parliament. In my research I focus on how political parties select candidates and on the individual recruitment chain. What rules do parties use to select candidates and how this affect which candidates they select? Is there a gender gap in political ambition among party members? Do inclusive and exclusive selectorates create different candidate lists? By answering these questions I try to get a grasp on both the supply and demand of political candidates and to examine whether this is gendered.

Other projects

Apart from my dissertation project, I am involved in a couple of other research projects. These projects are about gender quota; candidate selection in the UK; LGBT wings in political parties; gendered parliamentary behavior; and (gendered) violence against politicians.