Verthé, Tom

Tom Verthé is the coordinator of the ERC Advanced Grant on Emotional Acculturation at the Center for Social and Cultural Psychology (KU Leuven), headed by Prof. Dr. Batja Mesquita. The ERC AdG studies how and when emotional acculturation forms an important gateway to the social inclusion and wellbeing of immigrant minority individuals.

Tom is a former postdoctoral assistant at the Centre for Local Politics at Ghent University and guest professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. In June 2017 he completed his PhD on the strategic electoral behaviour of parties and voters in Belgium at the VUB. From 2012 until 2017 he was a researcher and the research manager of the PartiRep Interuniversity Attraction Pole. His research mainly focussed on elections, parties and voters, both in a qualitative and quantitative manner. In the past he has published or presented work on (among others) pre-electoral alliances, strategic voting behaviour, coalition voting, party organization and electoral volatility.

His latest academic work involved the organisation of the 2018 municipal Exit Poll and studying the dynamics of current voluntary municipal mergers in Flanders and their impact on local party (section) organisation. Tom is still involved with the Center for Local Politics at Ghent University and the Department of Political Science at Vrije Universiteit Brussel as a voluntary scientific collaborator.