Group Members

Dr Martin Hansen Dr Martin Ejnar Hansen is a political scientist specialising in Comparative European Politics and Public Policy with specific focus on parliaments, governments and parties. Before joining Brunel he was employed at the University of Southern Denmark, University of Aarhus and the University of Vienna. Qualifications: PhD Political Science (Aarhus) cand.scient.pol. (MSc Political Science) (Southern Denmark) BSc Political Science (Southern Denmark) My research is focused on parliaments and political parties in Western Europe. Primarily, it is based on quantitative methods. My recent research has focused on committee assignments in parliaments and on roll call voting in constitutional assemblies and pre-WW2 legislatures. I also have a continued interest in party manifestos and speeches and applied quantitative text analysis. Special Research Institute(s) The Magna Carta Institute Parliaments Political parties West European politics Governments Undergraduate Programmes Module convenor Explaining Politics: Quantitative Political Science in Practice (Yr 2) Public Policy Analysis (Yr 3) Advanced Applied Quantitative Methods (Yr 3)

Professor Jeffrey Karp Jeffrey Karp is a political scientist specialising in research on public opinion, elections, and political behaviour with over 20 years of experience in survey research. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Calfornia, Santa Barbara in 1995. His research addresses questions about how institutions influence political attitudes and behaviour and examines such topics as electoral reform, political mobilization, gender and political leadership, popular support for direct democracy, and attitudes about European integration. He has published in nearly all of the major international journals in the discipline, including the British Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Studies, and Political Psychology. In the late 1990s he served as a co-investigator on the New Zealand Election Study (NZES) to gather data to examine the effects of electoral system change after New Zealand replaced its first past the post (FPP) electoral system with a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system in 1996. Since then he has designed and carried out surveys in the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, and Australia. He is a member of the advisory board of the British Election Study. In 2015-16, he was a visiting fellow with the Electoral Integrity Project, based at the University of Sydney and carried out a three wave panel survey for the Australian Electoral Commission. Results from the survey are helping to inform the debate about how to modernise the electoral process and improve the voter experience in Australia. Recent research focuses on gender and political leadership and ways to improve the democratic process focusing on the conduct of elections and support for electoral reform. Comparative Political Behaviour Module convenor PP1609: Introduction to World Politics PP1602: Introduction to Comparative Politics PP2611: Explaining Politics: Quantitative Political Science in Practice PP2623: Comparative Electoral Systems Office Hours Tuesdays 1:15-3:15 and by appointment

Professor Mark Neocleous I am Professor of the Critique of Political Economy in the Department of Social and Political Sciences, having joined Brunel in 1994 in what was then a Department of Government. I am a critical theorist who focuses on questions of state and capital, especially as they pertain to police, security, and war. I also have an interest in the political imagination, especially concerning bodies, monstrosity, subjectivity, and death. I am currently working on a book called The Most Beautiful Suicide. In 2024 I have two books coming out: Pacification: Social War and Police Power is forthcoming with Verso, and The Security Abolition Manifesto is forthcoming with Red Quill (in English), with simultaneous publication in Spanish (Katakrak), in Greek (Affect Editions), and in Turkish (NotaBene). My most recent book is The Politics of Immunity (Verso, 2022). More detail of my research is given in the links above called 'Research' and 'Selected Publications'. The 'Selected Publications' section lists only my books. Most of my published work, including my books, is available for free on shadow libraries. Much of it is also available either here: or here: If there is a publication of mine that you can't find on those sites, email me and I'll do my best to provide it. Qualifications: PhD Philosophy (Middlesex) MSc Politics and Sociology (Birkbeck) BSc Philosophy and Sociology (City) My new book Pacification: Social War and Police Power will be published by Verso in 2024. Also in 2024 a collectively-authored book called The Security Abolition Manifesto will be published by Red Quill (in English), Katakrak (in Spanish), Affect Editions (in Greek), and NotaBene (in Turkish). I am currently working on a book called The Most Beautiful Suicide. Much of my recent work has involved developing a critique of security, taking my earlier work on the state, the fabrication of order and the political mobilization of fear, in a new direction. The most recent development of this work takes the form of a book called The Politics of Immunity (Verso, 2022). Details can be found here: The Politics of Immunity. An interview about The Politics of Immunity can be found on Red Medicine, here: Mark Neocleous-The Politics of Immunity A second interview about The Politics of Immunity can be found on the New Books Network, here: Mark Neocleous-The Politics of Immunity In 2021 a new edition of A Critical Theory of Police Power was published by Verso: A Critical Theory of Police Power. This is also available as an audiobook: Critical Theory of Police Power Audiobook Interviews about A Critical Theory of Police Power can be read: in English, here: A Plague of Blue Locusts and another in English here: A Theory of Police Power - Interview with KPFA FM in Spanish, here: The police we have is the police liberalism wants and in Greek, here: Capitalism created by police power There is also a special issue of the journal Social Justice on the book and its impact over 20 years: Social Justice Special Issue on A Critical Theory of Police Power Various books and essays are available in Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Greek, Turkish, French, Italian and German. Undergraduate Programmes Module convenor or co-convenor Reason, Unreason and the People: Political Thought from Hobbes to Freud (Yr 1) Plato's Republic (Yr 2) Karl Marx and the Critique of Political Economy (Yr 3) Administration REF co-ordinator for Politics Chair of the Board of Examiners for the Department of Arts and Humanities

Dr Katja Sarmiento-Mirwaldt I completed my PhD in 2007 with the support of the ESRC and the University of Essex. I then joined the European Policies Research Centre at the University of Strathclyde to pursue an ESRC-funded post-doctoral and research fellowship. Having worked as a Research Officer at the London School of Economics for two years, I joined the department in August 2012. My research interests cover several aspects of contemporary European politics and policy. First, I am interested in the regional and spatial dimensions of European politics, including citizen relations across national borders, cross-border cooperation and regional development policy. Second, I have a broad interest in the way that politicians justify and communicate their ideas about political institutions and practices in party manifestos or parliamentary debates. Third, I am working on a collaborative research project that examines perceptions of politicians' ethical conduct in Britain, France and Germany. I have a special interest in Polish, German and French politics but am also interested in broader political developments in post-communist Europe. My research has been funded by the ESRC, the British Academy, the Polish-German Science Foundation and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Comparative European politics (especially Polish, German and French politics) Borders and cross-border cooperation Political communication Corruption perceptions Undergraduate Programmes Module convenor Research Design and Qualitative Methods in Politics (Yr 1) European Union Politics: Problems and Prospects (Yr 3)

Dr Manu Savani My research uses mixed method experiments to answer questions about health and political behaviours. I am interested in behavioural biases and 'nudges' that might bring about better outcomes for people. Prior to my PhD, I was an economist at the UK Government's Department for International Development over 2003-2012. I held roles covering a range of countries (Afghanistan, Burundi, Malawi and Somalia) and policy issues (pro-poor growth, HIV and AIDS, conflict and development, and value for money in aid spending). More recently, I was a Global Impact Evaluation Adviser for Oxfam GB, managing evaluations for the Gendered Enterprise and Markets project in Zambia and Bangladesh using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods in the field. Read about my work on: Covid-19 vaccination choices and attitudes across the G7, funded by the British Academy Commitment devices, and why nudges might fail Commitment devices and health behaviour change Whether people prefer to be 'nudged' or 'shoved' in a pandemic Why you should pre-register your research, and how easy it is to do Behavioural public policy I am interested in investigating how behavioural economics can support positive policy outcomes. My work has explored nudges for health behaviour change on obesity (read about my field experiments here and here). I am currently investigating how nudges might affect vaccination decisions, funded by a British Academy Grant on Covid-19 recovery. Our report is published here. I reviewed what we know about the public's preferences for nudges compared to harder policy instruments. Does the Covid-19 pandemic prompt a rethink of the conventional wisdom that people prefer softer, freedom-preserving policy measures over harder, restrictive measures? Read about our findings here. My PhD thesis applied Thaler and Shefrin’s (1981) Planner-Doer dual-self model to health behaviours. I designed and implemented two mixed methods field experiments that evaluated the impact of commitment devices on health behavior around obesity, working in partnership with Camden Council and the private sector. The research tested new ways to measure concepts such as sophistication and myopia, critically assessed the planner-doer model using quantitative and qualitative data, and raised new policy recommendations for how commitment strategies can be designed into public health programmes. My thesis was awarded the 'Best Dissertation' prize by UCL Dept of Political Science. Experiments in political science I use survey experiments to better understand voters attitudes. I am investigating how voters evaluate candidates accused of sexual harassment (with Dr Sofia Collignon at Royal Holloway University). Our study of US voters offers important insights into the role of personal values in voters' decisions (pre-registered here). I am also looking at what factors make British voters more or less likely to consider i-voting, remote online voting, in elections (with Prof Justin Fisher, pre-registered here). Welfare policy I am interested in how behavioural public policy might apply to welfare reforms, with a focus on financial capability and decision making. I am interested in how the design of the flagship welfare programme Universal Credit interacts with the realities of budgeting and financial decisions in low-income contexts. Behavioural public policy Field and survey experiments, and mixed methods RCTs Welfare policy and politics I teach Public Policy (undergraduate) and International Development (postgraduate) modules, and provide dissertation supervision.

Professor Peter Thomas Professor Peter D. Thomas is an historian of political thought, an historian of philosophy and a political theorist. He has studied and worked at the University of Queensland, Freie Universität Berlin, L’Università “Federico II”, Naples, the University of Amsterdam and the University of Vienna. He has been a member in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, a research fellow at the University of Helsinki, and the Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, and a recipient of Australian, British, German, Italian and Dutch research fellowships. Qualifications: Fellow of the Higher Education Academy PhD (Amsterdam) MA (Research) BA (Hons) (UQ) BA (UQ) Professor Thomas is an historian of political thought, an historian of philosophy and a political theorist. As an historian of political thought, his major contributions have been in the history of Italian political thought in the early twentieth century, particularly the thought of Antonio Gramsci. He has also co-edited volumes on Karl Marx’s political-economic thought in historical context, and on the development of the thought of Louis Althusser. As an historian of philosophy, he has published on the history of German philosophy in the mid nineteenth century and Italian philosophy in the twentieth century, the history of Marxist philosophy, philosophies of history and theories of plural temporality. As a political theorist, his work has focused on concepts of political organization, forms of socio-political transformation, and theories of subalternity, inclusion/exclusion and citizenship. He is currently working on a study of central themes in contemporary radical political thought, including notions of the nature of politics and processes of politicization, the relationship between politics and the political, and the concept of the political subject. He is also working on a collection of documents and critical essays related to Gramsci’s time in Russia (with Professor Craig Brandist of the University of Sheffield, funded by a British Academy grant). In addition to his own research, he has also translated the work of Roberto Finelli, Antonio Negri and Massimiliano Tomba, among others. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory, and co-editor of the Historical Materialism Book Series. History of political thought History of philosophy Italian political philosophy Marxist philosophy and theory Contemporary political theory Undergraduate Programmes Module convenor The State and Revolution (Yr 2) Crisis and Critique (Yr 3) Module contributor Central Themes in Political Thought (Yr 1) Postgraduate Programmes Module convenor Revolution and Counter-revolution in Twentieth Century Political Thought Administration Co-director of the Brunel Social and Political Thought Research Centre