Laura Chazel

Laura Chazel holds a Ph.D. in political science from Sciences Po Grenoble. Her research focuses on left-wing populist parties. In her PhD (2016-2021), she focused on two movements: Podemos (Spain) and La France insoumise (France) and analysed how they adopted populism as a discourse and as a new theoretical reference. As a post-doctoral researcher at the Jagellonian University (2022-2023), she works on the wish of "radicalization" of (liberal) democracy by four left-wing organizations: La France insoumise, Parti du Travail de Belgique (Belgium), Podemos, Syriza (Greece).

Since 2023, and as a research fellow at RIFS, she works on the "popular environmental" discourse of Die Linke (Germany), La France insoumise and Podemos. The project focuses on the links between left-wing populism and climate change. It aims to understand how left-wing populist parties address environmental issues and the extent to which their environmental narrative is framed in populist terms - i.e. an opposition between those at the bottom" (e.g. the people, the victims of air pollution, pesticides, or junk food) and "those at the top" (e.g. the elite responsible for pollution).