She has a B.S. in Political Science and a P.h.D. in Social Sciences from the University of Leuven (Belgium). She was a visiting scholar at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in the Spring of 2016 and 2017. She is president of the Belgian Political Science Association VPW. Her substantive research interests include political trust, political engagement, deliberative democracy and political communication with a regional focus on Europe. To investigate these topics, she draws on cross-national surveys, panel surveys and experimental methods. Her studies appeared in journals such as Political Research Quarterly and European Journal of Political Research.