"As a Sciences Po alum, who is now at SSE, and who visited the LSE last year, I am following CIVICA closely and saw the CIVICA Research Conference as an interesting opportunity. This year is my last as a PhD student and I will soon be on the academic Job Market. Winning the poster competition is a great way to gain exposure across all CIVICA partner universities, and it will hopefully help me to get an academic position", says Chloe.

To explain what inspired her to explore the topic of her research, she adds: "The emergence of radical right parties in Europe is the main political event since the fall of communism. Some of their policy proposals have huge implications for the economy, democracy, and human rights. Understanding how all the other political actors reacted to the rise of radical right over the last 25 years seemed a good starting point to study the potential consequences for European societies."

In the paper, Chloe studies the reaction of both the voters and the governing parties to the emergence of the radical right party in a multi-party system such as France, and the consequences for electoral outcomes. By combining responses in a unified framework, she shed light on the complex interplay between all the political players. She finds that radical right candidates boost participation. But, is this result driven by voters supporting or opposing the radical right? She uses a novel approach to show that the pro-radical right voters are mainly responsible for the increase in mobilization. Regarding parties' responses, she also shows that left-wing parties become more prone to coordinate on a common nomination in order to block the radical right. Ultimately, radical right candidates affect the electoral dynamics to an extent that it radically changes the winning probabilities of their opponents.

Valuable experience and great feedback

As an economist who studies the radical right, Chloe was enthusiastic about presenting her poster to political scientists. She received great feedback, and they suggested some additional readings. She also enjoyed the discussion with archivists who brought a more historical perspective and gave her ideas for potential new projects.

Making the poster forced her to identify and highlight the key ideas that she wanted to convey. It has also taught her to be able to explain her paper in a short amount of time.

"However, the poster does not cover everything, and I hope that people will read the paper as well", she says.

Chloe encourages other emerging scholars to participate in competitions such as this one, as well as in academic conferences.

"Being a PhD student can seem lonely at times, but I am convinced that networking is a very important aspect of research. One might start new collaborations, get some great feedback to improve their own project, or just learn about others' exciting work on research frontier topics", she concludes.