Research

At the University of Kent, I am a member of the Comparative Politics Group, the Political Psychology Group and the Centre for the Study of Social and Political Movements. I also co-convene the Political Studies Association's Political Psychology group.

POLITICAL TRUST

Book
Trust: How Citizens View Political Institutions was published by Oxford University Press in April 2024. The book covers why trust is important as a measure of political support, what trust means, how trust is (or should be) measured, how and why trust has evolved over time, what causes trust and what the effects of trust are on citizen engagement and compliance.

Project on trust in COVID-19 information sources
With Will Jennings (Southampton) and Joseph Hamm (Michigan State), I was awarded a grant by the British Academy for a project on 'Identifying the trustworthiness of information sources during the coronavirus pandemic: Enhancing health engagement across the population'. The project ran Oct 2021 - Mar 2022.
Project website

Trust network
I have convened a group of European/US scholars to work on emerging priorities in trust research. We held a discussion workshop on 'New Directions in Political Trust Research' in Cologne in July 2023. You can find details here.

Journal special edition
I was the co-editor of a special edition of Frontiers in Political Science on political trust.

Working papers
'How Should We Measure Political Trust?' PSA annual conference, Brighton, March 2016 (paper)

PUBLIC ATTITUDES TO POLITICS AND DEMOCRACY

Public perceptions of administrative fairness in the digital welfare state
I am part of a project (York and Kent universities) looking at public evaluations of the fairness of welfare decisions, particularly in the context of digitised or automated social security assessment processes. The project runs Sept 2022 - Sept 2024. Details of the project are here.

Public attitudes to democracy
I have explored political legitimacy in the context of what people desire from democracy, and how they evaluate the performance of the democratic system. This research, which draws on data from the European Social Survey, is now published in Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties (see 'Publications').

Political discontent
This project - conducted with colleagues in Psychology and Sociology - is designed to identify and measure different forms of political discontent. We differentiate between mild forms of discontent, such as dissatisfaction, and more severe forms, such as cynicism. We test whether these forms can be empirically distinguished, whether they apply differentially to different social and political actors (politicians, doctors, scientists), and whether they have different effects on people's attitudes and behavioural patterns.

'What does it mean to be discontent? The nature and implications of citizen discontent in Britain' (paper)

ELECTORAL BEHAVIOUR

I am conducting research into how voters make electoral choices, in particular the effects of knowledge on the considerations that underpin those choices. How far are these effects moderated by the context in which voting decisions must be made?