The School has expanded in recent years, and is now home to twenty-two active researchers, who have been awarded grants from the ESRC, the AHRC, the British Academy, the European Commission, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Our expertise falls into four broad categories: public policy, international politics, media and society, and social and political theory. A case study from each group illuminates our varied interests:

• Professor Hussein Kassim’s ESRC-funded study (£209K) ‘The European Commission in Question’ was recently endorsed by the Commission’s president, José Manuel Barroso, who remarked that the project “has produced the largest and richest data set on attitudes of Commission officials ever uncovered. The project’s findings will help us make the Commission a more efficient and effective administration that better serves European citizens.” A monograph based on the project is under contract to Oxford University Press.
   
• Dr Adriana Sinclair’s recently-published monograph International Relations Theory and International Law (Cambridge University Press: 2010) challenges IR theory to engage more with international law, a vital part of global affairs that too often neglected in IR scholarship.
   
• Professor John Street’s and Dr. Sanna Inthorn’s ESRC-funded project (£77K) on citizenship and popular culture examines whether first-time voters use popular culture to articulate political attitudes and values.
   
• Dr. Alexander Brown’s article “The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006: A Millian Response” was declared the best article published in the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy in 2008.

More research Projects

Guest Speaker Series

PSI attracts distinguished scholars and practitioners to the guest speaker series that it regularly runs. Our weekly research seminar hosts university-based scholars from across the world. Our practitioner speaker series – ‘The Too Difficult Box’ – is convened by the Rt Hon Charles Clarke, and has attracted speakers such as Baroness Shirley Williams, Professor Anthony Giddens, and Sir Stephen Wall. The Centre for Research in European Studies (CREST) convened by Dr. Vassiliki Koutrakou, hosts speakers from across the European Union.

ESRC Centre for Competition Policy

The School is a partner to the ESRC Centre for Competition Policy, a world-class interdisciplinary research centre. It has close links the Schools of American Studies, History, Philosophy, Film and Television Studies, Economics, and Law. Where appropriate, doctoral students can be supervised by academics from two different schools.