Heleen Schols holds an honours MSc in Social Psychology from the University of Amsterdam, and a MA in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex.

Currently, she is a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on interactions between local government and civil society in which practices and places for democratic deliberation are contested. Using both discourse analysis and ethnography for an in-depth study of cases, she looks at what happens when the ideas and actions of people within society are not seen to fit easily within the policies of the government. Specifically, the research is designed to show the way the way interactions may function, implicitly or explicitly, as negotiations about the meaning of citizenship and legitimacy.

A growing attention, in academia as well as practice, to ‘deepening democracy’ beyond institutions like elections and parliamentary debates opens up the public sphere as a relevant site for democratization. This raises the question in what ways and on whose terms this democratization takes place: which voices, practices, and places are included and which are excluded? When people are engaged in democratic debate they do more than negotiate about solutions for the issues at hand. The interaction  can also serve to negotiate ‘meta-issues’ such as what types of reasoning and behaviour are acceptable and what constitutes legitimate political intervention. Attention to this aspect of interactions is important as a vibrant democracy needs more than public debate. There is also a need to critically examine, and in some cases adapt, the rules governing that debate.

The research is informed by an intersectional perspective, which recognizes the crosscutting nature of structures of identity and power in society. It includes attention to the question how both researchers and practitioners can go beyond the search for a ‘neutral’ point of view, instead aiming to employ our initial, necessarily non-neutral conceptualisations as a useful starting point for further analysis, and a deepening or widening of our understanding of the issue at hand.

Alongside her research, Heleen Schols is a civil servant who holds a position as a policy advisor for the Amsterdam Municipality. She works at the Zuidoost district. 

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