Comparative Politics and Policy (CPP)

Dr Bettina Petersohn

Dr Petersohn is a Senior Lecturer in Politics, working on local democracy, intergovernmental
coordination, and political attitudes in Wales. She serves Co-Investigator on the Welsh Election
Study 2026, collecting survey data on public opinion, attitudes and political behaviour in Wales.
In addition, Dr Petersohn works with UK and international scholars on municipal councillors
and local elites in Europe, focusing on their experiences as representatives and perceptions of
local autonomy, policy influence across institutional contexts. Between 2021-2025, she was
the Co-Lead of the Horizontal Coordination Working Group of the Cost Action: IGCOORD
(Intergovernmental Coordination from Local to European Governance). The results of that work
are published in an Open Access Volume: Behnke, N., Petersohn, B. (Eds.) (2025). Horizontal
Intergovernmental Coordination at Local and Regional Levels. Evidence from Europe and
Beyond. Palgrave Macmillan.

Dr Bryn Willcock

Dr Willcock has been teaching at Swansea University since 1995. His main teaching and research interests focus upon American foreign policy, American history, terrorism, nuclear history as well as British and European politics. Dr Willcock has been involved in the publication of books by both Oxford University Press and Taylor and Francis. In 2010 he was involved in the European-wide PartiRep research project, a comparative study of linkage mechanisms between citizens and the political system. In 2014 he was engaged as a consultant on British public policy during the creation of the EUVOX voting project, a website allowing voters to compare their views to those of different political parties.

Dr Caner Sayan

Dr Sayan is a Senior Lecturer in Policy Analysis who specializes in the politics of water, environmental justice, water governance, and climate change. He has a special interest in climate change adaptation in Africa, Turkey, and the Middle East. Among other projects, he is currently working on drought resilience of smallholder farmers in Kenya and water and regionalism in the Euphrates-Tigris Basin. Dr Sayan serves on the steering committee of Swansea’s Climate Action Research Institute and the Faculty’s Climate Action Research Network.  

Dr Dion Curry 

Dr Curry is an Associate Professor in Politics and Public Policy, working on political trust, political legitimacy, governance, expertise/epistemic communities, and disruptive technologies. He also serves as the Research Lead of Swansea’s School of Social Sciences and the unit’s Deputy Environment Lead for REF’28. Among other projects, he currently investigates the psychological underpinnings of citizen perceptions of trust in expertise, supported by a MASI Summit Grant led by Dr Gabi Jiga-Boy (School of Psychology), and the impact and governance of blockchain technology. 

Professor Jonathan Bradbury

Professor Bradbury researches the territorial politics of how the UK is governed, relating both to devolved and local government. He is interested in analysing the statecraft of governing, as well as political, policy and representation implications of territorial government. His recent work has focused on the analysis of devolution since the late 1990s and includes his book Constitutional Policy and Territorial Politics in the UK: Union and Devolution, 1997-2007 (Bristol University Press, 2021). Since 2021, he has been Associate Dean in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, responsible for Research, Innovation and Impact. He is also Lead for the University’s ESRC and AHRC Impact Acceleration Accounts.

Dr Kristan Stoddart

Kristan Stoddart is an Associate Professor for Cyber Threats in the School of Social Sciences and also works with the Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law. He is a member of the Project on Nuclear Issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. In 2022 he was also made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). He has recently completed three books, including Cyberwar: Threats to Critical Infrastructure (Palgrave/Springer, 2022). The other books respectively examine Russia’s cyber offensive against the West and China’s embrace of offensive cyber espionage. In addition, he is engaged in a research project examining EU resilience to hybrid warfare funded by the European Union. 

Dr Louis Bromfield

Dr Bromfield is a researcher of political engagement, gamification, political forecasting and participation. He holds a BA in Politics, an MSc in Computer Science and a PhD in Politics from Swansea University. His PhD thesis, funded by the Swansea University Research Excellence Scholarship, examined the psychological impact of using an on-line political forecasting platform. In 2022 he used a UKRI Challenges fund worth £12,932 to conduct a field experiment with 500 participants using his own forecasting website. He aims to continue his research on gamified political forecasting, looking to cover more elections to add to his PhD’s focus on the UK Local Elections in May 2023.

Professor Matthew Wall

Professor Wall conducts research on comparative politics, elections and public opinion, election forecasting, vote advice applications, and electoral systems. His research has been supported, among others, by The Robert Carr Fund, the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust, and the Learned Society of Wales. His current projects focus on digital politics, including the use of non-partisan innovations like voting advice applications in election campaigns, real-time election forecasting, and democratic engagement.

Danielle Joyce

Danielle’s research delves into the intricate relationships between social class, place, and political party loyalty. Through comprehensive analysis of demographic data, socio-economic indicators, and electoral trends, her PhD project aims to unravel the interlocking forces shaping contemporary UK politics. By identifying how class, place and loyalty intersect with political identities, it seeks to elucidate factors driving changes in voter choice throughout recent years. The project will employ mixed-method approaches, combining existing quantitative data with qualitative interviews, to provide an understanding of the evolving political landscape. The findings will aim to predict future voting trends and guide political engagement strategies amid evolving socio-political dynamics.

Keiron Burgess

Keiron is a PhD student at Swansea University, whose research focusses on the interplay between Pandemic-Level Health Crises (PLHC) and the democratic trajectory of hybrid political regimes. It raises the argument that PLHCs puncture the equilibrium and require a political response through policies within the crisis management process, with such responses holding the ability to provide pathways of centralised decision making or political co-optation. This leads the thesis to discuss the input and output elements of legitimacy and the importance that they hold towards the possible democratisation, or autocratisation, of hybrid regimes. 

Quadri Alimi

Quadri Alimi is a PhD student at Swansea University. His research project, entitled ‘Identity politics: Examining the inclusion of religio-political identity into Nigeria's modern democracy’, examines the origins of identity politics in Nigeria, with an in-depth narration of four periods: Pre-colonial era, Colonial era, Postcolonial/Independence era and Neocolonial era. Employing a mixed-methods approach, it zooms in on political exclusion and economic deprivation as underlying drivers of identity politics. Quadri holds a BA in Islamic Religious Studies and a MA in African and Diaspora Studies from University of Lagos. In 2024, he was awarded the Swansea University International Postgraduate Research Excellence Scholarship (SUIPRES) to pursue PhD studies in Politics and International Relations.

Rapee Tapta

Rapee is a PhD student at Swansea University, conducting research on human rights, human security, and migrant workers. His thesis explores how government actions and policy implementation impact migrant workers, particularly those who are low-skilled. His educational background includes a BA in Local Government and a MA in European Studies from Khon Kaen and Chulalongkorn Universities in Thailand. In 2024 he was awarded a scholarship from the Thai Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation to pursue PhD studies in the field of politics and international relations.

Molly Cranch 

Molly is a PhD student conducting research focussed on ecological security, post-human agency, political ecology and environmental justice. Her thesis explores how dominant security discourses fail to recognise alternative voices in climate security practices. Employing postmodernist perspectives, she looks to uncover how ecological processes of dialogue, reflexivity and humility can give post-human actors agency in global security practices. With her background in Geography (BA), and IR and Politics (MA) she looks to utilise her interdisciplinary background to uncover new insights to reimagining what security means in the face of climate crisis.