Teaching
POLI244 Substantive Representation
This module combines classic approaches to and recent developments on the study of the relationship between public opinion and public policy in advanced democracies with research design aspects. This is a research-connected teaching module for motivated students who are interested in understanding the role of public opinion in policy and how research is conducted. Students will be constantly exposed to high-quality research based on sophisticated theories and empirical analyses on the opinion-policy nexus. The module will scrutinise questions like: Do parties respond to voters? Are political elites’ views congruent with those of voters? Do policymakers stick to their election mandate or represent changes in public opinion’s preferences and priorities? Under what circumstances do policymakers change their policy? To what public opinion signals do they respond? Do governments respond to protest? Does public opinion respond to policy? Are policy views of some groups represented differently? Do politicians listen and explain their decisions?
At the end of the module, students will become familiar with opinion-policy research and its findings. Their coursework submission will be a research design based on a topic from the module. This module will push students beyond their comfort zone but will also give them the preconditions for undertaking a successful dissertation in their final year.
Please find my syllabus here.
POLI346 Politics and the Brain
This is an interdisciplinary module in political psychology that combines basic statistical concepts and data analysis with SPSS with substantive content on biological, physiological, psychological, communication related, and health-related aspects of political behaviour.
This module exposes students to high quality, to cross-disciplinary research largely based on quantitative methods, and to statistical inference. This means that the practical part of the module is divided between seminars and data lab sessions. In their assessments, students: engage in the hypothesis generation process; are tested on their understanding of data analysis and interpretation of findings based on quantitative research and substantive content; analyse data and produce a research note or short article, following the structure of short articles published in the leading journal American Political Science Review (including background, hypotheses, data, results, and conclusions).
Please find my syllabus here.
Modules for 2024-25
ADVANCED TOPICS IN ELECTORAL RESEARCH
Module code: POLI518
Role: Teaching
COMPARATIVE POLITICS
Module code: POLI107
Role: Teaching
DISSERTATION
Module code: POLI401
Role: Teaching
MASTERS DISSERTATION
Module code: POLI119
Role: Teaching
POLITICS AND THE BRAIN
Module code: POLI346
Role: Module Co-ordinator
SUBSTANTIVE REPRESENTATION
Module code: POLI244
Role: Module Co-ordinator