QUALIFICATIONS

Phd in Politics (Keele); M(Res) in Political Parties and Elections (Keele), BA(Hons) in International Politics and Politics (Keele)

EMPLOYMENT

2008 – present

Teaching fellow, University of Birmingham

2007 – 2008

Lecturer in Politics, University of Sussex

RESEARCH INTERESTS

• Political parties

• Western European party systems

• Political institutions and institutional engineering

• Parties and democracy

PROFILE

I am currently employed as a Teaching Fellow in Comparative Politics, teaching modules on immigration, the European Union and contemporary European history. Previously, I have been employed as a lecturer in Politics at the University of Sussex, where I taught comparative politics, British political history and Thatcherism.

My principal research interests surround comparative Western European parties and party systems. I completed my ESRC-funded doctorate in 2008 entitled “Established parties’ strategies and party system continuity: an empirical study of 17 western European countries between 1950 and 2006”. My thesis focused on the role that political parties can play in the process of party system change and looked explicitly at the strategies and tactics that established parties employed in order to try to preserve their positions at the heart of western European party systems. This study involved assessing access to the media, party finance, electoral systems and electoral laws in order to determine how parties could affect the institutional and electoral environment in which they compete and with what results.

My wider research interests include electoral systems, political parties and democracy, institutional engineering and British politics, and I am particularly keen to pursue research into the field of political parties and democracy in the future.

AWARDS AND FUNDING

 ‘1+3’ ESRC Studentship (University of Keele), 2003-2007.

TEACHING

Immigration and Citizenship in Western Europe (POLS 334)

Contemporary Europe: History and Concepts (POLS G92)

Themes in European Immigration and Citizenship (POLS G94)