The University of Exeter has appointed a group of scholars in the department of politics who specialise in research on campaigns, elections and political parties. These scholars maintain an active research agenda and have been successful in securing external funds in excess of £3 million to support both research and post graduate training in this area.
Established in 2008, the Centre for Elections, Media & Parties at the University of Exeter provides many opportunities for teaching and research on elections from both a British and comparative perspective. We sponsor special workshops and events that have brought together leading scholars from both British and international universities who are among the leading research in this field. We also sponsor faculty and student seminar series and many other activities.
One of our priorities is to encourage and facilitate post graduate training in the area of electoral behavior. Members of CEMaP have recently been awarded a four year ESRC grant (beginning July 2010) to facilitate research and training in the area of Comparative Cross-National Electoral Research (CCNER).
Exeter is also the hub of ELECDEM, a Marie Curie Initial Training Network in electoral democracy that brings together 11 expert teams from 9 European countries to provide substantive and methodological training in elections research to a cohort of early stage and experienced researchers.
We are currently undertaking a number of projects funded from the British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council, the European Union, the Leverhulme Trust, the National Science Foundation, the Nuffield Foundation, and the New Zealand Electoral Commission. These projects examine the electoral process in a variety of different contexts, including for example, the 2010 British election, the 2009 European Elections, the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, the 2008 New Zealand election, and the 2007 Turkish election. Our current projects involve collaboration with researchers at the University of Amsterdam, University of Auckland, University of California, San Diego, University of California, Riverside, Carleton College, Dokuz Eylul University, Emory University, European University Institute, University of Iowa, University of Manchester, University of Minnesota, University of Oxford, University of Plymouth, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
We provide data and web based resources for projects that our staff are associated with such as the New Zealand Election Study. We have an ongoing relationship with another strong base of electoral research that is close at hand, the Centre or LGC Elections Centre at Plymouth.
