The British Election Study is managed by a partnership between The University of Manchester and The University of Oxford. The Scientific Leadership Team is comprised of Professor Ed Fieldhouse, Professor Jane Green, Profesor Geoff Evans, Dr Jon Mellon, and Dr Chris Prosser.
The University Partnership
The British Election Study is managed via a consortium of The University of Manchester, and The University of Oxford (Nuffield College).
It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council
The Scientific Leadership Team
Professor Ed Fieldhouse
Ed Fieldhouse is Professor of Social and Political Science at the University of Manchester. He has been Director of the British Election Study since 2014, and is Director of the Cathie Marsh Centre for Social and Survey Research. He was Director of the Institute for Social Change (2007-2012). His main research interests include geographical and contextual influences on voting behaviour, social theories of turnout and vote choice, electoral registration and turnout, and local campaign effects.
Professor Jane Green
Jane Green is Professor of Political Science and British Politics at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow of Nuffield College. She is Co-Director of the British Election Study, Director of the Nuffield Politics Research Centre, President of the British Polling Council, and an Election Analyst for ITV News, providing analysis in the 2015, 2017 and 2019 British general elections, the 2016 EU referendum and the 2016 and 2020 US Presidential elections. Her main research interests lie in understanding mechanisms of electoral accountability for government performance, party reputations and other policy outcomes. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in the UK.
Follow Jane @ProfJaneGreen
Professor Geoffrey Evans
Geoffrey Evans, FBA, is Official Fellow in Politics, Nuffield College, and Professor in the University of Oxford. He is Co-Director of the current British Election Study, and was a member of the team running the BES between 1987 and 2001. He has also directed various major international surveys and for 20 years edited the journal Electoral Studies. A specialist in class, inequality, political attitudes, perceptions, and voting behaviour, in Britain and comparatively, he has published widely in political science, sociology, and related disciplines. Among his current research interests are class, ethnicity and political representation, education and the UK’s political elite, the measurement of social status, the nature of partisan biases, and the role of party strategies in the realignment of social cleavages.
Dr Jonathan Mellon
Jon Mellon is an Associate Professor at West Point and Co-Director of the British Election Study. He has previously held academic positions at the University of Manchester and the University of Oxford. Jon obtained a DPhil in Sociology from Nuffield College, Oxford. His research interests include cross-national voting behaviour; developing tools for social science measurement; causal inference; and survey design. Jon has also worked at the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe, running statistical analysis of election observer reports, for the World Bank as a data scientist analysing online civic engagement, and has worked for the BBC on election night coverage and exit polls.
Follow Jon @jon_mellon
Dr Chris Prosser
Chris Prosser is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is a Co-Director of the British Election Study. His research interests include political behaviour, political psychology, survey design and the measurement of political attitudes. Chris has also worked as a psephologist for ITV News since 2015, running the on-the-night forecasts for 2017 and 2019 General Elections, and the 2016 EU referendum.
Follow Chris @caprosser
Dr Jack Bailey
Jack Bailey is a Lecturer in Quantitative Political Science at the University of Manchester, and member of the Scientific Leadership team at BES. He joined the British Election Study as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in 2020, after working with both BES and YouGov on his PhD thesis. His research interests include economic voting, comparative politics, political methodology, and Bayesian statistics.
Follow Jack @PoliSciJack
Research Fellows/Associates
Dr James David Griffiths
James David Griffiths is a Research Fellow with the British Election Study. He has previously held an academic position at Cardiff University, where he worked for the Welsh Election Study. James completed his PhD in Politics at the University of Manchester, and joined the British Election Study team as a Research Fellow in 2023. His main research interests include political behaviour, nationalism and national identity, territorial politics, and political methodology.
Follow James @jamesdavidgriff
Dr Stuart Perrett
Stuart Perrett is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Manchester. He recently received his PhD in Sociology from New York University. His research sits at the intersection of political science and sociology, with a focus on the changing structure of public opinion. He uses novel quantitative methods to document patterns of disagreement by partisanship and across cleavages such as class, religion, and generation in both the US and Britain. In ongoing research, Stuart uses novel experimental designs to evaluate variation in the quantity and quality of information voters use when choosing between political candidates.
Follow Stuart @perrett_stuart
Advisory Panel
The BES advisory panel assists us in achieving our core objective to design and conduct a study that is relevant to answering important contemporary questions about electoral politics, political attitudes, and voting behaviour in Britain. It is comprised of 12 members with a wide variety of expertise in different aspects of British electoral politics and survey methodology:
- Professor Susan Banducci (University of Exeter)
- Professor Justin Fisher (Brunel University of London)
- Professor Rachel Gibson (University of Manchester)
- Professor Chris Hanretty (Royal Holloway University of London)
- Professor Ailsa Henderson (University of Edinburgh)
- Professor Will Jennings (University of Southampton)
- Professor Charles Pattie (University of Sheffield)
- Professor Brian Schaffner (Tufts University)
- Dr Rosie Shorrocks (University of Manchester)
- Professor Maria Soboloewska (University of Manchester)
- Professor Paula Surridge (University of Bristol)
- Professor Richard Wyn Jones (Cardiff University)
Media enquiries
For media and communications enquiries please contact Sue Bailey.