Paula Diehl is Professor for Political Theory, History of Ideas, and Political Culture, and Director of the International Populism Research Network, at the University of Kiel, Germany. She held fellowships and guest professorships among others at Sciences Po (Paris), École des Hautes Études, U-Penn, Institute for Advanced Studies (Bologna) and La Sapienza (Rome). Her research is dedicated to political representation and body performances, the political imaginary, democratic theory and populism, including the normalization of the far right. She developed a concept of political representation that integrates the symbolic and the imaginary dimensions of politics.
Michael Saward is Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. He was head of Department of Politics at the Open University, and Director of the Midlands Graduate School ESRC Doctoral Training Centre from 2013 to 2016 at Warwick. His key area of research is contemporary democratic theory. In recent years he has focused on the theories of representation and performance. A Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust supported research on Democratic Design (2016-19). He has been a visiting scholar at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil), and Australian National University.