University of Leiden

Alexandre Afonso

Alexandre Afonso is Assistant Professor at the University of Leiden, Netherlands. He works on welfare state and labour market reforms, and the political economy of labour migration. His work has been published in Socio-Economic Review, Journal of European Public Policy, European Political Science Review, Governance, Comparative European Politics and other outlets. His book Social Concertation in Times of Austerity was published by Amsterdam University Press in 2013. He has written for the Washington Post, CNN and Jacobin Magazine.

King’s College London

Chiara Benassi

Chiara Benassi is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Human Resource Management at King’s Business School (King’s College London).

I completed my PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science and I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. I am an industrial relations scholar working at the intersection between political economy and sociology of work and employment, with a focus on the effect of the institutional context on union strategies, employer strategies and workers’ outcomes at national, sectoral and workplace level. I apply a multi-level approach to the study of work, linking (changes in) policies and institutions at the national level to workplace outcomes. My current research project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, investigates how national and local institutions affect how large and small firms in the automotive sector develop and use skills in the workplace in different European countries. My work has been published in international academic journals such as the British Journal of Industrial Relations, Socio Economic Review, Politics & Society, and Industrial and Labor Relations Review.

I have been coming to SASE since the first year of my PhD, and it still is the conference where I feel most “at home”. I serve as convener of Network E “The Political Economy of Industrial Relations and Welfare States” and on the SASE Membership Committee. I am also one of the founding members of the SASE Women and Gender Forum.

Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies

Pálma Polyák

Pálma Polyák is a Senior Researcher in Political Economy at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. Previously, she worked as a PhD researcher at the Scuola Normale Superiore, and as a policy advisor at the European Parliament. Her research lies at the intersection between International and Comparative Political Economy, with an explicit aim of collapsing the boundaries between the two subfields. In particular, her work explores the politics of growth models, persistent current account imbalances, fiscal austerity and underinvestment, linking these issues to systems-level factors like external demand shocks, currency power or geoeconomics. She has published in the Review of International Political Economy, the Journal of European Public Policy, New Political Economy and Comparative European Politics.

UCD Dublin

Aidan Regan

Aidan Regan is Professor of Political Economy at the School of Politics and International Relations (SPIRe), University College Dublin, and Principal Investigator of “Democracy Challenged,” an ERC Consolidator Grant investigating how corporate tax avoidance and wealth concentration reshape capitalist democracies. Previously he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies and a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute. His research combines forensic accounting methods with comparative political economy to trace how multinational enterprises use intellectual property structures to shift profits and avoid tax. He also works on the distributional politics of labour markets, housing wealth, and social protection. His co-authored book, The New Trilemma of Advanced Capitalism: Democracy, Growth and Effective Climate Action, is forthcoming with Agenda Publishing in 2026. He has published in Socio-Economic Review, Politics & Society, Review of International Political Economy, West European Politics, New Political Economy, and Perspectives on Politics, among other outlets, and writes regularly for public outlets on Irish and European political economy.

University of Sussex

Sabina Avdagic (deceased 2024)

SASE mourns Sabina Avdagic’s sudden passing in January 2024. We send our profound condolences to her family and colleagues, and wish to express our gratitude for all that she brought to SASE in her many years with the organization. Sabina was actively involved in SASE activities since her graduate studies. In addition to her work as organizer of Network E, she was also a member of the Executive Council and was Program Co-Chair of the 2007 conference in Copenhagen.

Sabina Avdagic was a Reader in Political Economy at the Department of Politics at the University of Sussex. Her research interests included comparative labor relations and welfare states, theories of institutional change and economic adjustment, and causes and consequences of social concertation. Most recently, her research focused on the causes and effects of national variation in the strictness of employment protection in Europe and on the role of the media in shaping attitudes towards the welfare state.

May her work continue to guide our reflections, and her life remind us how precious our time together is.

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