ELECT Project
ELECT is a 5-year research project, funded by the European Research Council and led by Dr Joseph Lacey from the School of Politics and International Relations.
It studies contemporary election campaigns in Germany, Italy, the UK and the US, with a special focus on how candidates, campaign professionals, journalists and citizens perceive campaigns and their role in them.
Project Team
Dr. Samuel Johnston
Post Doctoral Researcher
Samuel's main field of study is comparative politics, particularly the European Union (EU) and its effect on party competition. Samuel's research has been published in a variety of journals, including West European Politics, Party Politics, Comparative European Politics, and Irish Politics.
Dr. Leonardo Puleo
Post Doctoral Researcher
Leonardo Puleo's research deals with party competition and challenger parties, with a focus on the spreading of illiberal ideas. His PhD dissertation received the Ghini Prize in 2023 assigned by the Società Italiana Studi Elettorali (SISE, Italian Association of Electoral Studies). He has published in several peer-reviewed journals, including South European Society and Politics, Political Studies and Democratization.
Dr. Jan Fabian Dollbaum
Post Doctoral Researcher
Jan Fabian Dollbaum has recently defended his PhD on “Party system change during crises” at the European University Institute. It deals with the popularity losses of government parties and the success (and failure) of challenger parties during the post-2008 economic crisis in Europe. His further research interests include public opinion and the effects of social movements.
Dr. Biko Koeing
Researcher
Biko's current teaching work involves public policy, inequality, and political polarization. Trained in ethnographic, interview based, and survey research methods, his research agenda primarily focuses on labour politics and the emergence and success of right wing populism. He holds a Ph.D., Politics from the New School for Social Research, and a B.A., Political Science, Economics, Design & Production from Temple University
Lorraine Marrey
Project Manager
Lorraine has a BA in English, and Greek & Roman Civilisation, a Postgraduate Diploma in Library and Information Studies, and an MSc in E-Learning. Lorraine’s career spans the library sector including roles as an academic librarian, school librarian and Public Library Manager. Previous roles also include Training and Engagement Manager with the Digital Repository of Ireland, working with cultural heritage material and research data in the humanities and social sciences.
Advisory Board
Professor David Farrell
Advisor
Professor Farrell is a specialist in the study of representation, elections, parties, and deliberative mini-publics. He completed his PhD at the European University Institute Florence. Professor Farrell was Head of School at University College Dublin from 2010-13 and again from 2016-21. Prior to his move to Dublin in 2009, he was professor and head of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester. From 1995-2018 he was the founding co-editor of Party Politics. He was President of the Political Studies Association of Ireland from 2012-16. He was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2013, and appointed as vice-President in 2023.
Professor Rachel Gibson
Advisor
Rachel Gibson is a professor of Politics at the Institute for Social Change at the University of Manchester . She was the Director of the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research in 2016. She had previously served as Professor of New Media Studies at the University of Leicester and a lecturer in politics at the University of Salford. Rachel has led several projects examining the impact of the Internet on political parties, campaigns and voters funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Australian Research Council (ARC). Her research focuses on the impact of new information and communication technologies on political parties, particularly with regard to their activities in the elections and campaigning sphere.
Professor Stefaan Walgrave
Advisor
Stefaan Walgrave is a renowned professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Antwerp, specializing in political communication and social movements. His research focuses on media’s impact on politics and public opinion, leading to numerous influential publications, including “Populism as Political Communication Style: An Empirical Study of Political Parties’ Discourse in Belgium” and “The Contingency of the Mass Media’s Political Agenda setting power: Toward a preliminary theory”. Professor Walgrave has played key roles in academic governance, serving on the Research Council, and Department Board, and chairing the Social Sciences Council.
Professor Jane Mansbridge
Advisor
Jane Mansbridge, Charles F. Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values, is the author of Beyond Adversary Democracy, an empirical and normative study of face-to-face democracy, and the award-winning Why We Lost the ERA, a study of anti-deliberative dynamics in social movements based on organizing for an Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. She is also editor or coeditor of the volumes Beyond Self-Interest, Feminism, Oppositional Consciousness, Deliberative Systems, and Political Negotiation. She was President of the American Political Science Association in 2012-13 and received the Skytte Prize in 2018.
Professor Lisa Herzog
Advisor
Lisa Herzog is a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Groningen since 2019. Since 2021 she is the Director of the Center for Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and since January 2023, Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy. She holds a master (Diplom) in economics from LMU Munich, and an M.St. in Philosophy and D.Phil. in Political Theory from the University of Oxford. She has worked at, or visited, the universities of St. Gallen (CH), Leuven (BE), Frankfurt/Main, Utrecht, and Stanford. Between 2017 and 2022 she was a member of the Global Young Academy. She is currently a member of De Jonge Academie and Young Academy Groningen.
Professor Mark Warren
Advisor
Mark E. Warren is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, where he held the Harold and Dorrie Merilees Chair for the Study of Democracy. He is author of Democracy and Association (Princeton University Press, 2001), which won the Elaine and David Spitz Book Prize awarded by the Conference for the Study of Political Thought, as well as the 2003 Outstanding Book Award from the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action. He is editor of Democracy and Trust (Cambridge University Press 1999), and co-editor of Designing Deliberative Democracy: The British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly (Cambridge University Press 2008), and the Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy (Oxford University Pressn 2018).