Team

Median Research Centre (MRC) was the Coordinating Organization of the “Less Hate, More Speech” project. The other partners were University of Bergen (Norway) and the Central European University (Budapest, Hungary).

The MRC research team leader was Dr. Marina Popescu, the director of MRC. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom.

The University of Bergan research team leader was Dr. Elisabeth Ivarsflaten. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative Politics at University of Bergen and holds a D.Phil. in Politics from Nuffield College at the University of Oxford.

The Central European University research team leader was Dr. Gábor Tóka, a Professor of Political Science at the Central European University. He holds a PhD in Sociology from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary.

Coordinating Organization – Median Research Centre (MRC)

Median Research Centre (MRC) is an independent think-tank dedicated to social research and improving the quality of democracy and governance in Romania. Its mission is to promote better informed and more substantive public debates on democratic processes and policy making by drawing on state-of-the-art research in social sciences.

MRC has created user-friendly and engaging interactive online applications, as well as new information interfaces between citizens, journalists, interest groups, academic experts and political parties on the pressing social, legal and economic issues of the day.

TestVot, developed by MRC, was the only vote advice application available at all parliamentary, presidential and European elections held in Romania since 2008. MRC’s OpenPolitics.ro platform, launched in 2012, has provided expert analyses on the main parties’ policy pledges and on other topical issues, such as constitutional reform, while also organizing online debates engaging experts, stakeholders and regular citizens on controversial topics, such as shale gas exploitation.

MRC was a partner in international research projects conducted under the Sixth and Seventh Framework Programmes of the European Commission and the main coordinator of research projects funded through the EEA Financial Mechanism and the Black Sea Trust of the German Marshall Fund.

Partner 1 – University of Bergen

The University of Bergen is a fully-funded public research and teaching site in Norway.

The Less Hate More Speech project was supported by the Department of Comparative Politics and was integrated into the Norwegian Citizen Panel’s research network, including scholars in Political Science, Media Studies, Sociology, Psychology, and Linguistics.

This network was coordinated by our Bergen research team leader Elisabeth Ivarsflaten and Sociology professor Mette Andersson. The group included doctoral candidates and post-doctoral fellows, and it benefitted from the connection to an international collaborative network including Scott Blinder (Oxford University), Robert Ford (Manchester University), and leading international scholars in the field like Prof. Paul Sniderman (Stanford University).

Partner 2 – Central European University

Central European University (CEU) is a privately funded teaching and research university founded in 1991 and accredited both in the United States and Hungary and currently in the process of obtaining full accreditation in Austria.

It offers English-language Master’s and Doctoral programs in the social sciences, the humanities, law, management, mathematics and public policy. The project had the support of the Department of Political Science, recognized as one of the best 50 in the world according to the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) university rankings.

The CEU research team was led by Professor Gábor Tóka who is an internationally renowned specialist in the comparative study of voting behaviour, political attitude formation, and political communication, and the author of several dozen articles in scholarly journals and edited volumes on electoral behaviour, public opinion, and political parties.