I am currently a Political Data Scientist for the UK's Labour Party and an Associate Professor in Comparative Politics at the University of Reading. I am a Visiting Researcher at the University of Oxford (DPIR), a Senior Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics (Data Science Institute), and a Visiting Asst. Professor in Political Behaviour at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Previously, I was an LSE Fellow at the European Institute of the London School of Economics and held Assistant Professorship positions at Swansea University and at the University of Kent. I hold a PhD in Political Science from Trinity College Dublin, and I am a HEA Fellow.
I specialise in electoral behaviour and public opinion analysis, with a focus on European (incl. British) and European Union politics. I use quantitative research methods in my research, particularly machine learning and in causal inference methods, with a focus on survey experiments.
My research blends political science and social psychology and it focuses on investigating factors conducive to democratic control, conceptualised as both accountability and political representation. The central aim of my research is to investigate factors that strengthen representative democracy - both at the domestic and supranational levels. I aim to investigate interventions that (a) enhance political information processing and accountability-inducing behaviours; (b) enhance the representation of citizens' preferences in policy-making.
I am working on 5 main research areas:
My projects on this topic investigate heuristics and biases in voters, retrospective voting, and the conditions under which voters can hold political agents to account. My published and working papers on this area also explore the causes and consequences of motivated reasoning and selective exposure and processing of information, borrowing from social and cognitive psychology.
Publications
My projects on this topic investigate the role of messages and information in attitude change, and the moderating role of social networks, sender and message characteristics for successful persuasion. I am currently taking the lead on the quantitative message testing research programme at the UK Labour Party.
Publications
My projects on this topic investigate the link between legislative activity and/or policy and public opinion and the conditions under which politicians respond to public attitudes. My published and working papers on this area also explore the consequences of representation failures for legitimacy and democratic norms.
Publications
The European Union is now closer to a political system than to traditional IOs. My published and working papers evaluate whether EU's decision making and legislative activities conform to expectations from advanced democracies. This line of my research also looks into attitudes towards supranational politics in European public opinion.
Publications
I am currently working on a working paper on the descriptive substantive link and whether the impact of the descriptive representation of women on substantive legislative activities/policies is contextual or unchanging. This has important implications for our understanding of the socio-psychological roots of gendered behaviour. I am furthermore interested in gender stereotypes and in the issue of gender bias and gender differences in voting behaviour and in political engagement.
Listed below are the university courses I have taught so far, with links to course materials for the courses I delivered as a sole convener: