Kaat Smets

Kaat Smets is a Reader in Politics in the Department of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London, where Smets has held appointments since 2013. Smets completed a PhD in Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute in 2010, following graduate study in Amsterdam and undergraduate training in journalism in the Netherlands, and held a postdoctoral position at the Centre for the Study of Political Change at the University of Siena before moving to Royal Holloway. Research spans voter turnout, political socialisation, electoral behaviour, and candidate representation, with work examining age and generational patterns in participation, the development of political interest across adolescence and young adulthood, and the electoral performance of candidates by sex and ethnicity. More recent work has addressed future anxiety among young people and its relationship to political attitudes, as well as the role of cognitive processes in politically motivated reasoning.