Tim Bale

Tim Bale graduated from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and then did his Masters at Northwestern University in the USA. Following a couple of years working for the NHS, he did his PhD, on the Labour Party, at Sheffield University, where he was supervised by Patrick Seyd and examined by Paul Whiteley – pioneers in the study of UK party membership. After teaching for a year at Sheffield, Tim went on to teach politics at Victoria University of Wellington and at the University of Sussex.

He moved to Queen Mary in 2012. He was the co-founder of the Political Studies Association’s specialist group on Conservatives and Conservatism. In 2011 his book ‘The Conservative Party from Thatcher to Cameron’ received the Political Studies Association’s W.J.M. Mackenzie Award and a new edition is due out in 2016. His other book on the party, ‘ The Conservatives since 1945’, is also out in paperback in 2016. Tim has also written on populist radical right parties, on green and left parties and, more recently, returned to writing about the Labour Party with ‘ Five Year Mission: the Labour Party Under Ed Miliband’. Tim is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

 

Paul Webb

Paul Webb (BA Nottingham 1977-1980, MSc London School of Economic 1980-1982, PhD European University Institute 1983-1986) is Professor of Politics at the University of Sussex, and has held a number of previous and visiting positions in Britain and abroad, including at Brunel University and the Australian National University. He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

His research interests focus on representative democracy, particularly party and electoral politics. He is author or editor of numerous publications, including:
* The Modern British Party System (Sage Publications, 2000), 2nd edition forthcoming with Oxford University Press.
* Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Societies (Oxford University Press, 2002, with David Farrell and Ian Holliday)
* The Presidentialization of Politics: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies (Oxford University Press, 2005, with Thomas Poguntke – revised edition 2007).
* Gender and the Conservative Party: From Iron Ladies to Kitten Heels (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, with Sarah Childs).

Paul is currently co-editor of the journal Party Politics and a former editor of Representation (1999-2007). He has regularly contributed to media coverage of politics, especially for BBC television, and national and local press and radio.

 

Monica Poletti

Monica Poletti graduated from the University of Milan and then did her Master of Research in Political Communication at the University of Amsterdam. She did her PhD (Political Sociology), on the determinants of social and political participation in Italy with a special focus on party membership, at the University of Milan, where she was supervised by Paolo Segatti – former president of the Italian National Election Studies (ITANES). During her PhD she spent time as a visiting fellow at the MZES (Mannheim Centrum for European Social Research) in Germany, and whilst there she was mentored by Hermann Schmitt (BES – British Election Study).

Since 2010 Monica has been a research fellow of the COST-Action ‘True European Voter‘ (TEV) project on the influence of context on electoral behaviour in European countries, as well as of the EU General Home Affairs-funded KING project (Knowledge for INtegration Governance) on Immigration. After finishing her PhD she was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Milan, doing research on voting behaviour, populism and euroscepticism, and spent time as a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science working with Ken Benoit (Methodology Dept), Sara Hobolt (European Institute) and Michael Bruter (Government Dept).

Since 2013 she has taught quantitative methods for the social sciences and political sociology at the LSE. Monica moved to Queen Mary University in 2015 to work on the ESRC Party Members Project (PMP). She is also co-editor of the LSE-based Euro Crisis in the Press blog.