Biography

Dr. Angelina Atanasova is an expert in social policy, equality and anti-discrimination, disability rights, and judicial dialogue between the Court of Justice of the European Union and domestic courts in the EU. At ARC Fund, her work focuses on vulnerable groups, labour mobility and social inclusion in projects in the framework of Horizon Europe. Angelina is also a Voluntary Research Associate with the Faculty of Law, KU Leuven in Belgium.

In her career, over the past decade, her work focus has been set on comparative research concerning disability rights and gender equality, social policy and employment at the EU level. As a Researcher at the European Social Observatory, Angelina led a thematic group on disability rights for the academic preparation of the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU (2024) and was a member of the core team for the European Commission-funded European Social Policy Analysis Network (ESPAN). In her previous capacity as a Research Manager at Ecorys, Angelina led and contributed to ex-post evaluations, impact assessment and other projects in the areas of social policy and education, mainly for DG EAC (Education, Youth, Sport and Culture), DG EMPL (Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion) and DG AGRI (Agriculture and Rural Development) at the European Commission.

Prior to that, Angelina was a Researcher in a European Research Council-funded project at the KU Leuven on judicial cooperation between the European Court of Justice for the European Union and domestic courts in the EU. Her PhD research project (Abstract) explored the application of the preliminary ruling procedure (Article 267 TFEU) in EU law disputes regarding social policy. Angelina held the competitive Fellowship of the Re:constitution programme (2020-2021); and was a Visiting Researcher at the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for International Courts (iCourts) (2019) and the Department of Political Science (2016), both at the University of Copenhagen. Previously, Angelina served as a consultant in equality data collection for the Open Society European Policy Institute. She is an author of a number of academic articles, policy reports, and op-eds for the general public with focus on disability rights, social policy and judicial dialogue in the EU.