The Caucus, which serves as the primary association for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people and allies within the APSA, is an important arena for the presentation of research on sexual and gender diversity studies in political science and related disciplines. 

The Awards are presented to individuals who have demonstrated exemplary service to the Caucus, the field of political science, or the broader LGBTQ community. 

A founding member of the Sexuality & Politics division of APSA, Professor Wilson's work on the Christian/Religious Right has significantly contributed to understanding of how these movements have weaponised LGBTQ+ rights and liberties to expand and consolidate their memberships. She has been actively involved with the APSA LGBTQ Caucus, Status, and Sexuality & Politics for nearly three decades. 

She also serves as Associate Editor at Political Research Quarterly (PRQ) where she continues to engage with scholarly developments, contribute her insights and foster academic community. 

In its statement, the awarding committee praised Professor Wilson's invaluable academic contribution: 

On receiving the award, Professor Wilson said:

, Professor of Politics, co-authors with Luke Glanville, Professor at the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University. 

The book considers that ‘states face multiple ongoing and emerging challenges, from climate change to global disease, mass atrocities to forced displacement, humanitarian crises to entrenched global poverty, and are constrained by material and political limits to the amount of resources that they can devote to these issues.’ It seeks to answer how, given these constraints, states should prioritise their global responsibilities. 

It does so ‘by proposing a two-level account of just prioritization that aims to be both philosophically sound and practically relevant. The authors assess several potential prioritization principles, including diversification, culpability, urgency, disadvantage, and national interest, and argue that states should prioritize issues where they can assist most effectively and where they can help those who are most underprivileged.’ 

The book considers a number of urgent issues, such as global poverty, climate change and global health.

is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and the project is a collaboration between Politics and Criminology. 

It aims to contribute to policy theory by discovering how policy workers make interpretations, manage relationships and practice discretion in the course of governing the trafficking problem.

There is currently a lack of primary research and cross-national comparisons about anti-trafficking collaborative governance. There is also a lack of research on non-sexual exploitative labour. 

The project will contribute to knowledge by discovering how policy workers' discretion impacts upon the prosecution, protection and prevention of trafficking. Moreover, the project includes people with lived experience of trafficking as co-producers. 

The project will assess similarities and differences between policy practices across three countries: United Kingdom, Belgium and Romania. It focuses primarily on policy workers, their organisations, and inter-relations. 

It examines how they make discretionary choices in policy implementation, including narratives they use in interpreting the policy problem and negotiating network relationships. These are set in the context of formal governance structures and the political narratives at work within them. 

The overall research question for the project is: How is the human trafficking problem governed by interpretive policy workers making discretionary choices in the context of specific policy regimes? 

is a Lecturer in Political Theory and the British Academy/Leverhulme project will support her research on how different forms of cross-border and domestic solidarity can be harmonised. 

The research questions the assumption that solidarity with refugees contradicts or erodes solidarity within the welfare state. Instead, the project explores how political solidarity with refugees can be community-building and support wider social justice goals.

The grant will support a workshop on refugees’ political engagement and solidarity with a number of stakeholders in Sweden, a country where the presumed conflict of solidarity has been particularly stark. Sandelind will also interview migrant activists and NGOs, focusing on how their work can and does contribute to building wider solidarity that may also support the welfare state. 

Since 2014, this community hub has also served as the setting for a fruitful collaboration between the University of Swag直播 and local refugees and asylum seekers, fostering both language skills and community building.

The initiative, spearheaded by the politics department at the University, began as an English language conversation project. Every week, students would meet with refugees and asylum seekers at the Chrysalis Centre, offering them a chance to practice English and engage with the broader community. 

This effort was originally conceived by two Swag直播 students studying Politics and International Relations, John Beswick and Chen Liu, who recognized the isolation and language barriers faced by many refugees during a visit to the centre.

The project has evolved since its inception, expanding in 2022 to include students from universities across Swag直播. This expansion was coordinated by Senior Lecturer Aoileann Ní Mhurchú from Swag直播 and Lecturer Dr. Josephine Biglin from the University of Salford.

The students contribute more than just language skills; they forge meaningful connections with the attendees, contributing to a sense of community and mutual support.

Reflecting on her experience, Ila Lessof, a University of Swag直播 student who participated in the 2022/23 project, described it as transformative: "The community and friendships created were invaluable... the chance to learn from and support each other brought so much joy and purpose." 

Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, the project has persevered, adapting and growing in response to the needs of the community. The University’s commitment to this initiative underscores the critical role that higher education institutions can play in supporting refugees within local communities.

As the Chrysalis Family Centre continues to thrive, the collaboration between Swag直播 students and local refugees remains a powerful testament to the positive impact of community engagement.

The report sets out strategies for navigating the UK’s political context on climate change, which were developed during a workshop at Swag直播 with academics, practitioners from various political parties, as well as NGOs and social movements.

In a recent blog post, and argue on the basis of the report that there has been a breakdown of the ‘climate change consensus’ and a backlash against net zero. To overcome these issues, they strategies they suggest are:

1. Mitigate the dilemmas that political parties face when navigating this new political context.

They suggest that parties may do so, for example, by ‘Designing policies that create irreversible effects, such as zero-carbon infrastructure investments in electricity, housing, or transport that would be too costly to dismantle.’

      2. Attack the backlash directly

This option entails promoting ‘net zero strategies that explicitly address social justice and inequality. Examples include policies that benefit low-income households, such as investment in public transport, and using the language of ‘energy security’ when promoting renewable energy.

The following report and blog post are available to read below:

After the election, wrote a , focusing on the ‘fragmentation of the British parliament and the rise of smaller parties at the expense of the Conservatives’.

wrote for the , analysing the results of all major parties and discussing the weakness of Labour’s base.

During election night, Robert Ford and Marta Miorio were at the BBC as part of their exit poll and analysis team. was at the BBC World Service Business Report election coverage.

Prior to the election, argued in n that children should have a say in elections.

Louise Thompson wrote a number of pieces for The Conversation and LSE British Politics and Policy blog, including of Reform’s election success.

wrote a , highlighting the key role played by renters in the election.

Htet Lynn Oo is a former MA Peace and Conflict Studies student. 

In addition to the , Htet was also awarded a special commendation for his MA dissertation in the prize, organised by the British Council in partnership with the British International Studies Association (BISA).

They noted:

The British Council will be publishing the dissertation.

The outgoing Head of Department of Politics, , has been awarded a British Academy Senior Research Fellowship to complete a long-standing book project on A Soviet Rule of Law: Justice and the Constitution in Soviet Russia.

Gorlizki is one of 11 2023/24 awardees of the . His project will provide the first in-depth analysis of a major Soviet policy to ask whether it might be possible to have a particular form of the rule of law in an authoritarian state. 

In doing so it builds on and extends a growing body of work on the “authoritarian rule of law” and poses questions—such as “How does a rule of law emerge?” and “What is the role of constitutions in dictatorship?”—which can shed new light on how authoritarian regimes function.

Researchers can then use this data to help answer a range of important research questions, such as what determines our exposure to news and entertainment sources and how this affects our political choices, feelings toward other people and trust in governing institutions.

The interdisciplinary research team also includes co-PIs from and from . 

is Professor of Political Science. Her research focuses on the impact of new information and communication technologies on political parties, with particular focus on elections and campaigning.

is Lecturer in Politics. Her research expertise is in the fields of political participation and political communication, particularly looking at the effects of digital media.

Jamie J. Hagen is currently a Lecturer in International Relations at Queen’s University Belfast, where she is the founding co-director of the Center for Gender in Politics. Her work sits at the intersection of gender, security studies, and queer theory.

Hagen brings a feminist, anti-racist approach to her work, bridging gaps between academics, policy, and activist spaces. She was the lead researcher on a British Academy Innovation Fellowship (2022-2023) focusing on improving engagement with lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer women in Women, Peace, and Security Programming. 

Her research in this field is published in the Journal of Gender Studies, International Affairs, Critical Studies in Security, the International Feminist Journal of Politics, and the European Journal of Gender and Politics as well as in the Washington Post, London School of Economics’ Women Peace and Security Blog, the International Peace Institute’s Global Observatory, and other outlets.

Hagen is co-editor of the edited volume (BUP) and co-developed the (English/Spanish).

Bhatia has been co-chairing the Student-Staff BAME network as well as working with the newly founded Diversify Politics student society. Diversify Politics won the New Society Award.

Luke Bhatia teaches on and convenes a number of units at the , including Human Rights in World Politics and Comparative Political Analysis.

Liu completed his doctoral degree in sociology at the John Hopkins University. His research uses comparative-historical methods to examine the uneven development of capitalism across space and time, as well as its multifold crises. 

Some of his specific research interests include the political economy of development, food and land governance, state capacity, institutional change, and social reproduction.

Liu’s recent works have appeared in the Journal of Peasant Studies, Development and Change, and Journal of Development Studies. 

He is currently working on a book that examines the macro-historical origins, divergent local trajectories, and contrasting distributional impacts of agrarian capitalist transformation in post-reform China.

Liu will be joining the Politics Department in September. 

Dr Hannah Wright joins the Politics Department from Queen Mary University of London, where she holds an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship. Prior to that, she was Research Officer at the LSE Centre for Women, Peace, and Security.

Hannah’s research addresses the relationships among gender, race, class, militarism, and coloniality, focusing on how masculinity and femininity shape security institutions and practices. She employs ethnographic method to study security policymaking. 

She has published in journals such as International Feminist Journal of Politics and Political Science and Politics. 

She has also published a number of policy reports on issues relating to gender, peace and security.

Wright will be joining the Politics department in September.

Dr Jess Gifkins’s has co-authored the report Queering Atrocity Prevention in collaboration with the charity Protection Approaches, which works to change how the world views and thereby prevents identity-based violence. 

During the United Nations Security Council Arria-formula Meeting at the end of March, the report was cited by both the UK delegation and the UN’s Independent Expert of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.

The report can be read and downloaded and the meeting recording is available .

article has become a seminal text in political economy and the social sciences more broadly. 

The article argued ‘that we are witnessing the rise of authoritarian neoliberalism, which is rooted in the reconfiguring of the state into a less democratic entity through constitutional and legal changes that seek to insulate it from social and political conflict.’

Ten years on from its publication, the will celebrate and reflect on the article’s impact. It will ask how the concept of ‘’ maps on to a world that in many ways looks different now than a decade ago.

The workshop is open to paper submissions and it will also host a roundtable featuring Dr Ian Bruff and a number of experts. 

The deadline for submitting abstracts is Friday, 19 April 2024.

Ian Bruff is a Senior Lecturer in European Politics. His publications include the 2020 co-edited (with Cemal Burak Tansel) book .

In a blog for UK in a Changing Europe, analyses the circumstances behind Galloway’s surprising victory in the . Ford argues that the large swing to Galloway must be understood against the unique circumstances of the by-election, such that Labour’s disavowal of their own candidate. 

‘Rochdale was almost like a natural experiment to see how low the Labour vote would go if voters are given no information, are not mobilised, and are actively discouraged from supporting the party’s candidate. It is difficult to imagine more favourable circumstances for outsiders and insurgents.’ 

Nonetheless, Ford maintains that the Rochdale results may still worry Labour in a volatile electoral landscape where they can no longer rely on old loyalties. 

Professor Rob Ford is co-author of , published by Palgrave Macmillan. 
 

, and discuss the approach, which they have developed at the at Swag直播:

‘JUST entails three core ideas that together enable a shift toward principles that respond to complex social and political conditions that currently block progress towards the scale of change needed to tackle the interlocking crises of climate, care, cost of living, and more.’

Further, given the political backlash against net zero strategies, they argue that the ‘JUST approach has potential to counteract negative assumptions and fears that reduce public support for climate policy, by overcoming mistrust through participative strategies, targeting policy action to reduce not intensify inequalities, and to generate spaces for imagining and valuing new ways of living.’

research focuses on comparative politics, Latin American politics, democratic representation, parties and party systems.

He completed his PhD at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and his book was published in 2018 by Oxford University Press. In 2020, he published the co-authored book with Cambridge University Press.

Rosenblatt has published widely in journals like Comparative Politics, Governance, Party Politics and Comparative Political Studies. He will be joining the Comparative Politics research cluster at Swag直播.

Both of these new books explore different and usually unscrutinised aspects of academic writing and research, and thereby provide new insights into methodology and global politics.

is a collection of writing in academia that usually does not make it to the public space, but which provides insights into global politics and the neoliberal university.

is a ‘collective mediation on writing, methods, violences, and un/becomings in global politics’ that aims to ‘offer a theoretically creative work which engages extensively with the visual and affective to un-discipline knowledge and modes of expression.’

is a Senior Lecturer in International Politics.

is currently a Hallsworth Research Fellow at the Department of Politic and will take up his post as Lecturer in January 2025. 

He completed his PhD at Swag直播 and has taught at King’s College London and Utrecht University. His research focuses on democratic theory, political economy and political epistemology.

Benson’s first book, , will be published by Oxford University Press in 2024. In the book, Benson provides an epistemic justification of democratic politics and a robust answer to democracy’s critics. 

His research has also been published in journals such as the American Political Science Review, Political Studies and Politics, Philosophy & Economics.

As a new permanent member of Swag直播 Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT), Benson will contribute to teaching and research at one of the UK’s leading centres for Political Theory.

Based on an article published in The American Political Science Review, Benson discusses the dangers of political polarization. He explains that the main threat isn’t that people come to accept misinformation or falsehoods, but that it narrows our perspectives on politics.

For democracy to work, he argues, it needs a diversity of perspectives from which to understand and view political issues. Polarising rhetoric ‘collapses our varied identities and compresses them into a more limited number of mega-perspectives.’

‘By telling us that politics is a struggle of good vs. evil between an ‘us’ and a ‘them’, it suggests that there are only two perspectives from which to view and understand politics’.

is a Hallsworth Research Fellow at the Department of Politics.

Find out more information:

There is a growing field in practice and research dedicated to investigating the distinctive contribution of design to policymaking. Whilst the UK is a leader in the use of design in government and policy, this leading position could be enhanced through a more effective, cross-disciplinary evidence base about the use of design expertise in policymaking. 

This was the key message in a report launched this month, is co-authored by Catherine Durose, Lucy Kimbell, Ramia Mazé, and Liz Richardson.

, Head of the cross-government Policy Design Community highlighted the value of this intervention in ‘raising the waterline’ by enhancing the credibility and providing external validation of the significant potential of design within policymaking. 

, Executive Chair of the also strongly welcomed the report and emphasised the contribution that design can make to addressing tensions in government between long-term responses to wicked challenges, and the short-term necessities of governing. 

, Distinguished Professor of Design Management and Policy at Lancaster University and a Director of , agreed with the recommendations to help the field come into maturity from its ‘teenage’ years. , Chief Executive of the Local Government Information Unit argued that design has a critical role to play in meeting the significant challenges of service delivery, but needs to be able do so in a way that recognises the hard realities of funding.

The report proposes a research agenda that deepens understanding of: (1) the extent of design in policymaking, (2) how design’s distinctiveness can be applied through different types of design, (3) its impact, and (4) different relationships between design and policy. The launch events recognised design as an innovative approach to policymaking, while highlighting that it is not always well understood by policymakers. To this end, the report provides a basis for staking out the future directions of design research and policymaking.

Find out more information:

• Video of the launch

The will be based in the Critical Global Politics research cluster, which is the largest of five clusters across the Department.

The closing date for applications is Thursday, 15 February 2024.

For enquiries about the vacancies, shortlisting and interviews, contact Head of Department Yoram Gorlizki.

Politics is looking for three new colleagues to join as permanent lecturers:

1. , closing date for applications is Wednesday, 3 January 2024.
2. , closing date for applications is Monday, 15 January 2024.
3. , closing date for applications is Thursday, 1 February 2024.

For more information please refer to the Further Particulars. 

For enquiries about the vacancies, shortlisting and interviews, contact Head of Department, Yoram Gorlizki.

Parliamentary Studies is the only higher education module formally approved by the Houses of Parliament and is co-taught by university tutors and officials from the Houses of Parliament.

Universities teaching the module provide academic and theoretical content, while the Houses of Parliament offer practical teaching about the work, processes and business of Parliament.

It’s the third time since the module was created in 2013 that the UK Parliament has sought collaborators to teach the Parliamentary Studies Module, the format has generated a lot of enthusiasm and engagement with universities across the UK.

The module focuses on how the Houses of Parliament operates and covers themes such as: the structure of Parliament; the role of Select Committees; the role and work of MPs and the role and work of Members of the House of Lords.

In addition to learning about formal procedures, students also get a sense throughout the module of why cultures, traditions, and informal relationships matter when looking at the inner workings of the Houses of Parliament.

Commenting on the announcement Senior Lecturer in Politics and module leader said:

This year, students taking the Parliamentary Studies module had the privilege to visit Westminster on Wednesday, 29 November to attend a Net Zero Committee evidence session and to follow question time and a debate on a bill from the Commons and Lords Galleries.

Following this, the class met Bernard Jenkins MP (Chair of the Liaison Committee) and Wendy Chamberlain (Liberal Democrat Work and Pensions Spokesperson and Chief Whip) and attended sessions with parliamentary officials where they discussed careers in Parliament, campaigning with Parliament and committee work.

As part of their commitment to running the module, the Department of Politics subsidises travel to Westminster each year for the whole class, ensuring that all can join in what students have described as a ‘once in a lifetime experience’.

Find out more about the module .

Throughout November, , Professor and Chair of Global Politics, took part in several European policy events on Feminist Foreign policy.

, she contributed to a panel organised by Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF) at the Shaping Feminist Foreign Policy Conference in the Hague, organised and hosted by the Government of Netherlands. 

Haastrup spoke on integrating feminist postcolonial and decolonial perspectives into foreign policy. She also provided the keynote for another panel co-organised with UNWomen.

, she was a panellist at Conference: Towards a Feminist Foreign Policy for the EU organised by Hannah Neumann and Greens at European Parliament. During the panel, Haastrup highlighted that:

, Haastrup was a panellist at an event in the Austrian Parliament on Feminist Foreign Policy and at a workshop organised by the Vienna Institute for International Dialogue and Cooperation.

In the as new EDI Officer, , Senior Lecturer in International Politics, explains why she wanted to take on the role:

“I believe that it is important to serve the profession: throughout our careers we ask a lot of others (to organise conferences, to review articles and grant applications, to write references for us, and so on) and so we all also need to pay it forward.”

She also encourages early career scholars to not be afraid of asking for help and to seek advice from a mentor.

Dr Carl Death, Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy, recommends in African climate fiction, published in African Arguments. Death explains that:

"Through novels and short stories, African climate fiction authors are imagining futuristic desert landscapes, eco-cities, transformed humans and other species, and new forms of technology. The questions they ask are the ones politicians, engineers, architects and citizens must also ask."

Death has recently published two related research articles: ‘Africanfuturist Socio-Climatic Imaginaries and Nnedi Okorafor’s Wild Necropolitics’ in and ‘Climate Fiction, Climate Theory: Decolonising Imaginations of Global Futures’ in .

Rob Ford, Professor of Political Science, told the that the Conservative party conference was important for Rishi Sunak to define himself as a leader. 

Commenting on the presence of the previous leaders Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, Ford said that Sunak’s aim would be ‘to keep those two off the newspaper front pages and their allies quiet, and to project an image of a party that is united and ready for the fight, rather than divided and hoping for the sweet release of electoral death’.

Ford also joined a panel discussion at the . On the topic of the political impact of the HS2 controversy, Ford pointed out that politics isn’t just about technocratic judgments but also about ‘narratives and symbols’. 

The has awarded research fellow , a former PhD student at the Department of Politics, the 2023 Taiwan Studies Young Scholar Award (1st Prize).

The winning paper, “Weddings, Funerals, and Banquets: How Guanxi Serves Democracy,” explores how the informal institutions of guanxi affect political representation in Taiwan’s democracy today. Drawing on evidence from both in-depth interviews and observation, Tao argues that the unwritten rules of displaying connections with Very Important People (VIPs) lead Taiwanese national lawmakers to expend enormous effort on constituency activities in their districts. This research helps us better understand the resilience of Taiwan’s young democracy.

The winning paper was first evaluated through a double-blind external review process, and was further assessed during an oral presentation at the 20th annual EATS conference hosted by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London on 26-28 June 2023. The European Association of Taiwan Studies (EATS) promotes Taiwan studies in Europe.

“I was thrilled to hear the good news that Tao was awarded this year’s Young Scholar Award for Taiwan Studies in Europe. It is well deserved. Tao is not just one of the leading young scholars of Taiwan and cross-Strait relations today, but has also been pivotal in creating a community of young China scholars at Swag直播.” -

Tao Wang is a Hallsworth Research Fellow in Chinese Political Economy at Swag直播. He earned a PhD in Politics from the University in September 2021. His research lies at the intersection of informal institutions, political representation, and public opinion, with a regional focus on East Asia. Currently Tao is developing a book manuscript on constituency service in Taiwan, examining the ramifications of informal rules such as guanxi.

The retreat involved formal sit-down discussions of topics including the sources of trust and mistrust in U.S.-China relations, and confidence building and other measures to improve U.S.-China Relations. It also included informal activities for the diplomats, including hiking in Torrey Pines Reserve along the Pacific coast, and attending a Padres (San Diego) vs Cubs (Chicago) baseball game, which the Padres won. These activities gave the Chinese and American diplomats ample opportunity to get to know one another better, and further discuss bilateral issues.

Professor Peter Gries established the US-China Young Diplomats Dialogue in 2007 to generate mutual trust and improve U.S.-China relations, and cohosts it annually with Fudan University Professor WU Xinbo. It does this by creating an informal retreat-like atmosphere in which participating diplomats can establish personal relationships while frankly exchanging their views on bilateral relations. 

The 13th Dialogue was held in La Jolla, California, generously and expertly hosted by the 21st Century China Center at the University of California at San Diego. 

The participating American diplomats were Nick Snyder, Gareth Collins, Kim Fassler, Eric Bigelow, Paul Prokop, Emily Abraham, and Ashley Wood. The Chinese diplomats were LI Xiang (李想), WEN Zhirong (温志荣), HA Lisi (哈丽思), and PENG Yutian (彭宇田), all from the Chinese Embassy in Washington, and ZHU Shaoding (朱韶鼎), KANG Ning (康宁), ZHANG Jingcheng (张景铖), and HOU Jieying (侯洁莹) from the Chinese Consulates in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles respectively.

The (BES) is managed via a consortium of the University of Swag直播 and the University of Oxford. 

The prize was awarded the BES team, including Dr Jack Bailey who completed his PhD in Swag直播 last year and will be joining the Politics Department this year as Lecturer in Quantitative Political Science.

The judges commented:  

The Pippa Norris Prize is awarded by the Political Studies Association for a research team that have made an outstanding contribution to advancing knowledge in political studies.

highlights how Onuch and Hale document the story of how Zelensky came to be a key defender of the free world. They write that ‘the authors make a compelling argument that he was indeed the right Ukrainian, in the right place, at the right moment in history.’ 

The Department of Politics is honoured to have the support of for extra costs associated with a new Politics undergraduate course: ‘Ukraine Rises: Democracy, Protest, Identity and War in Comparative Perspective’. 

The course will be taught by Dr Olga Onuch, author of ‘The Zelensky Effect’ (OUP/Hurst 2022). The Petro Jacyk Foundation has previously supported major Ukraine Studies programs, scholarships and postdocs, mostly in North America and Ukraine.

Swag直播 is already leader in the study of Ukraine in the UK by having hosted and co-hosted a number of externally funded research projects on Ukraine, as well as hosting an ESCR Case Studentship with the British Council in Ukraine.

This year’s MacDougall Trust Prize for Elections, Electoral Systems and Representation, awarded by the Political Studies Association, was shared between Dr Ceri Fowler, who completed her PhD at Swag直播 last year, and Dr Lotte Hargrave, who is joining Swag直播 as a new Lecturer in Quantitative Political Science.

Dr Ceri Fowler’s thesis, ‘Gender and Voting Behaviour at the United Kingdom’s 2016 Referendum on EU Membership’, was awarded the prize because of its ‘exceptional level of curiosity, originality, and methodological rigour.’ 

The jury found that ‘using rigorous statistical methods to analyse different sets of survey data, the research reveals insights that are relevant beyond the EU referendum and the British context, and can inform the study of electoral behaviour, political attitudes, and gender and politics more widely. […] We believe that this work will have a profound impact on election scholars in Britain and beyond.’

The jury was also ‘extremely impressed with the scientific rigor and methodological sophistication’ of Dr Lotte Hargrave’s thesis, ’The Influence of Gender Stereotypes on Politicians’ Behaviour and Voter Attitude’. 

They ‘found the level of theoretical and methodological sophistication outstanding and thoroughly enjoyed reading this clear, compelling, polished, and mature work of research. It makes important contributions to our understanding of the role of gender in the political behaviour of elites over time. Moreover, it provides a glimpse into the potential of the candidate to drive the discipline forward with methodological innovations and rigour.’

Dr Jack Bailey and Dr Lotte Hargrave are joining Politics as permanent Lecturers in Quantitative Political Science.

Jack Bailey is currently a Research Associate at the University of Swag直播, where he works on the British Election Study. He completed his PhD at Swag直播 last year. 

His research focuses on economic voting, voting behaviour, and quantitative methods and he has published in journals including Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Behavior, and Electoral Studies.

Lotte Hargrave is currently the Head of Data Science at the public opinion consultancy Deltapoll. She completed her PhD at UCL, in which she examined the dynamic influence of gender stereotypes on politicians' behaviour and voter attitudes. 

In her research more broadly, she uses innovative quantitative design to study questions relating to gender, political behaviour, political communication, legislative politics, and public opinion. Hargrave has published in the British Journal of Political Science, Political Behavior, and Politics & Gender.

Professor Toni Haastrup will join the Department of Politics as Chair in Global Politics. She is currently a professor in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Stirling. Over the last decade Haastrup has established a formidable reputation as a leading expert and scholar on Africa-EU relations, on feminist foreign policy, and on the politics of knowledge production and race within the Women, Peace and Security agenda.

Haastrup is a recipient of the Flax Foundation’s Emma Goldman Award, which honours substantial contribution and engagement to feminist knowledge making in Europe. She is a recent recipient of the Independent Social Research Foundation Mid-Career Fellowship, for the project Towards a Feminist Peace. She has been a visiting researcher at the LSE’s Centre for Women, Peace and Security, the Universities of Addis Ababa, Lund and Leipzig. She is a former editor in chief of the Journal of Common Market Studies and incoming Associate Editor of Security Dialogue.

Using her expertise, Haastrup has worked with a number of international organisations and government departments like the UN, World Bank, the EU, Scottish, Canadian, South Africa and UK governments providing reports, briefings and rapid analysis on issues in global politics.

Haastrup is committed to supporting colleagues, globally, who are historically excluded from the discipline and profession. This is what informs her work within a variety of professional structures, including as the current Secretary of the British International Studies Association and as the most recent Programme Co-Chair, & ExComm member of the ISA Feminist Theory and Gender Section, and the Women Also Know Stuff platform.

A Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Authority, Haastrup has taught extensively on international organisations, the politics of European security, crisis in Europe, feminist themes in global politics and on contemporary global security challenges broadly through a critical lens.

As an expert on international trade, Dr Silke Trommer has been part of a project funded by UniPID Development Policy Studies (UniPID DPS), funded by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland (MFA) and managed by the Finnish University Partnership for International Development (UniPID). The project has just published the report: ‘’.

In 2022, the European Commission adopted the proposal for the corporate sustainability due diligence directive to advance the green transition and protect human rights in the EU and beyond. The proposed new directive would compel EU companies of substantial size and economic power, as well as companies in identified high-impact sectors that operate in the EU to identify, prevent and mitigate the adverse impacts of their activities on human rights and the environment.

This study draws from the literature on corporate social responsibility in global value chains, non-tariff measures, and inclusive trade, as well as insights from the Ethiopian garments industry and the Tanzanian coffee sector to analyse the potential impacts of this directive on least developed countries’ value chains and trade with the EU. 

Although the directive only directly applies to larger companies operating in the EU, this study highlights the likelihood of the directive’s far-reaching impacts on small-scale suppliers, small-holder farmers, workers, and communities in the least developed countries.

The study offers recommendations to address the shortcomings of the directive as well as the accompanying measures to European governments to minimise unintended impacts and promote inclusive trade between the EU and least developed countries.