Dr A. Sophie Lauwers is a political philosopher, and an IASH-Alwaleed postdoctoral fellow for 2025-2026 at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. Her current project is titled ‘Islam, National Identity and the State: Rethinking the Politics of Recognition.’

Prior to this, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Philosophy as well as the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at KU Leuven (Belgium). Her current research focuses on political secularism, epistemic injustice and religion, and questions of religion, national culture and the secular state. 

Sophie was previously a CISRUL PhD candidate, funded by the interdisciplinary Marie Skłodowska-Curie POLITICO programme. Her thesis, supervised by Professor Brian Brock, Professor Nadia Kiwan, and Professor Tamas Gyorfi, investigated how current models of political secularism contribute to secular and Christian hegemony in contemporary Europe, and proposed a new model of political secularism.

During her time at CISRUL, Sophie presented her research at various conferences, including the Britain and Ireland Association for Political Thought (APT), the Implicit Religion Conference, the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), and the European Academy of Religion. In 2020 and 2021, she was co-organiser of the four day conference and event series “Conceptualizing Difference”.

Sophie also holds master’s degrees in Political Science from Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands), and Political Philosophy from KU Leuven. Prior to her PhD, Sophie was an intern at the Dutch Green Foundation and a research intern at the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy, where she worked on migration diversity. She also edited and translated columns on racism and social exclusion.

PUBLICATIONs

CONTACT

sophie.lauwers@kuleuven.be

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research & Innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 754326.