About
Rob has twenty years' experience of research and teaching in the fields of elections, public opinion, political psychology and survey methodology. Basically, he is interested in what people think about politics, where those opinions come from, and how we can go about measuring slippery things like beliefs, attitudes and values. Rob has worked on a large number of (often ESRC-funded) survey projects, most notably as a founding investigator on the Scottish Election Study series, and has particular expertise in the design of survey experiments.
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Teaching
I have taught a wide range of modules over the years: in elections, public opinion and political psychology; in British, European and US politics; and in quantitative methods and survey design. So far at Southampton I've taught on Partisan, Public Opinion & Elections and next year I'll add (Dis)United Kingdom: Myth & Reality in British Politics.
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Biography
Rob arrived at Southampton in December 2023 having worked for 13 years in the Department of Government at the University of Essex, where he served for nine years as an editor of the British Journal of Politial Science and still teaches on the Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis. Prior to that, his first academic position was at the University of Strathclyde where he was founding investigator on the Scottish Election Study.
Amid a large number of ad hoc projects on subjects as disparate as the effect of depression on referendum voting, whether more moderate parties are seen as more competent, and the impact of physical appearance on electability, Rob's research has been in three main areas:
- Scottish politics, notably support for the SNP and Scottish independence (alongside James Mitchell, David Denver, Lynn Bennie, Charles Pattie, Christopher Carman, Ailsa Henderson, Fraser Macmillan and Jac Larner)
- Foreign policy attitudes and support for war among the British public (alongside Graeme Davies)
- The measurement of key variables in British public opinion: ideology, issue salience and partisanship
Rob has quite frequently appeared in the media talking about these issues, most notably on STV's election night programme where he has been the resident analyst of results since 2014.
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