Mercedes Mateo Diaz is FNRS postdoctoral fellow at the University of Louvain (UCL-Belgium). She has been a postdoctoral Marie Curie Fellow at the Robert Schumann Center (European University Institute), where she previously held a Jean Monnet Fellowship. She was research fellow at the Inter-University Centre for Electoral and for Political Opinion Research (Belgium), and visiting researcher at the University of Göteborg granted by the TMR network Representation in Europe. She has made a number of significant contributions to edited works and to peer-reviewed journals such as Verfassungsexperiment - Europa auf dem Weg zu einer postnationalen Demokratie, edited by Liebert, U et al, LIT-Verlag; Le parachutage politique, edited by Dolez, B & Hastings, M, L'Harmattan; Revue Française de Science Politique, South European Society and Politics, Res Publica, Feminist Legal Studies, Opinião Pública, and Revue Internationale de Politique Comparée. She has also co-edited a collection of essays entitled The Future of Gender Equality in the European Union (with Susan Millns, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).