DAMIEN BOL
Sciences Po Paris
CEVIPOF
I'm a political scientist at the Center for Political Research (CEVIPOF) in Sciences Po Paris. Prior to my current position, I worked at the University of Montreal and King's College London. I earned my PhD from the University of Louvain, my local university in my home region of Belgium.
In my research, I study people's experience with representative democracy, both from a micro and comparative perspective. My current interests include citizens' attitudes toward democracy and its values, as well as specific democratic institutions like electoral systems and deliberative assemblies. To investigate these topics, I conducted a range of experiments and surveys in several countries, espacially Belgium, Canada, France, and the United Kingdom, which are my main countries of expertise.
Beyond research, I enjoy taking part in the building of academic institutions. For example, I was the Director of the interdisciplinary Quantitative Political Economy Research Centre at King's College London from 2019 to 2023, which brought together more than 30 political scientists and economists, as well as 20 PhD students. In this role, I oversaw the hiring of several new colleagues, including senior ones, and launched an annual workshop for PhD students and postdocs in the field.
Since 2025, I'm the Director of the network for electoral studies in France (REEF, Réseau d'Études Électorales en France), which gathers around 100 researchers from a dozen universities across the country. In this role, I'm organizing an annual interdisciplinary workshop on elections in France to facilitate dialogue and coordinate research efforts across disciplines and institutions for the next electoral cycle.
Below is a selection of my favorite publications that best represent my current research interests. For a full list see, here.
SELECTED RECENT PUBLICATIONS
(2023) What Kind of Electoral Outcome Do People Think is Good for Democracy?
Political Studies 71(4): 1068–1089 (with André Blais, Shaun Bowler, David Farrell, et al).
(2023) Choosing an Electoral Rule: Values and Self-Interest in the Lab.
Journal of Economic Psychology 95: 102602 (with André Blais, Maxime Coulombe, Jean-François Laslier, and Jean-Benoit Pilet).
(2023) Public Support for Citizens' Assemblies Selected through Sortition: Evidence from 15 Countries.
European Journal of Political Research 62(3): 873-902 (with Jean-Benoit Pilet, Davide Vittori, and Emilien Paulis).