Liesbet Hooghe is the W.R Kenan Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Research Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence. She was born and educated in Belgium (KU Leuven), taught at the University of Toronto (1994-2000), and moved to Chapel Hill in 2000. Hooghe has had fellowships & visiting professorships at Cornell University; Nuffield, Oxford; the EUI, Florence; the WZB Berlin; VU Amsterdam; Konstanz University; Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg Delmenhorst; Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona; IAS Vienna; Sciences Po-Paris; the Free University of Berlin. She is a former chair of the European Politics & Society section of the APSA and of the European Union Studies Association. In 2017 she received the APSA Daniel Elazar Distinguished Federalism Scholar Award. Hooghe is PI of a five-year advanced European Research Grant, Transnational – local triggers, social networks, and group identities (2021-2026), which seeks to explain political polarization in Europe and the US. The Transnational Lab is hosted at the RSCAS, EUI.

Gary Marks is Burton Craige Professor of Political Science at UNC-Chapel Hill and Part-time Research Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence. He was educated in England and received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. In 2010 he was awarded a Humboldt Forschungspreis (Humboldt Research Prize) for his contributions to political science. He also received a €2.5 million Advanced European Research Council grant (2010-2015). In 2017 he was recipient of the Daniel Elazar Distinguished Federalism Scholar Award of the APSA. Marks co-founded the UNC Center for European Studies and EU Center of Excellence in 1994 and 1998, respectively, and served as Director until 2006. Marks has had fellowships and visiting professorships at the VU Amsterdam, the European University Institute in Florence, the Free University of Berlin, the Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg, Pompeu Fabra, the Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna, Sciences Po, Konstanz University, McMaster University, the University of Twente, and he was National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2021 through mid-2026, Gary is co-leading with Liesbet Hooghe an advanced European Research Council grant on political polarization in Western societies. The Transnational Lab is hosted at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the EUI, Florence.