Professor David Cutts

Professor David Cutts

Department of Political Science and International Studies
Professor of Political Science

Contact details

Address
Department of Political Science and International Studies
School of Government
Muirhead Tower
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

David Cutts is a Professor in Political Science with a particular interest in electoral and political behaviour, party and political campaigning, political and civic engagement, party competition and methods for modelling political behaviour. He has published numerous articles in leading journals including the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, European Journal of Political Research and the British Journal of Political Science. He is currently writing a number of books – the Liberal Democrats; PSOE and Podemos; Social theories of turnout and voting together – and working on numerous other projects (with colleagues) on political ambition, the radical right and party campaigning to name but a few. From July 2017, Prof Cutts will be the joint lead editor of Political Studies Review. He is also an Associate Fellow at Chatham House on the Europe Programme.

Qualifications

Professor in Political Science:

  • Ph.D. in Political Science and Political Geography, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol
  • MA in European Politics,University of Swansea
  • BSc (Econ) Hons in Politics and Social Policy, University of Swansea
  • Associate Fellow Chatham House, Europe Programme

Biography

Professor David Cutts joined the Department in February 2017 as a Professor in Political Science. He previously worked at the University of Manchester and the University of Bath. He has a PhD from the University of Bristol. Professor Cutts is also an Associate Fellow of Chatham House on the Europe Programme.

During his eight years in the University of Manchester, Professor Cutts was awarded a prestigious Simon Research Fellowship before becoming a Research Fellow (and later a Senior Research Fellow) in the Institute for Social Change. He was also part of the Harvard and Manchester joint research programme aimed at studying changes in social cohesion and social capital in the US and the UK. He was also Director of Postgraduate Research in the Institute for Social Change. At the University of Bath, Professor Cutts coordinated the Masters (MRes) Research in Politics, led the undergraduate dissertation program for four years and fulfilled many research administrative roles in the department.

His specific areas of interest include political and civic engagement, party and political campaigning, electoral and voting behaviour, geographical and contextual effects on political and civic behaviour, party politics, public opinion and party competition, the new/social media, ethnic minority political integration, right wing extremism, social capital and social cohesion, advanced quantitative/statistical methods and modelling political behaviour and public opinion.

Professor Cutts has secured a number of externally funded research grants and has more than seventy scholarly articles (including book chapters) with a number in world leading journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Research, the Canadian Journal of Political Science, and Political Behavior to name but a few.

Professor Cutts disseminates his work widely and has published numerous articles for newspapers (The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Times etc.), current affairs/political magazines (The New Statesman etc.) and political blogs (E-International Relations, Huffington Post, LSE blog, Democratic Audit, UK in a Changing Europe etc.) and appeared widely on radio and TV (including Radio 4 Today; The World at the Weekend, The Politics Show, BBC Parliament, BBC Inside-Out etc.). He has widespread experience of working with non-academic stakeholders including the Electoral Commission; Joseph Rowntree Foundation; the Equality and Human Rights Commission; the Scottish Executive/Government in Holyrood; Libraries and Archives and Museum Council; to name but a few.

Teaching

Undergraduate

  • POLS 239: Elections and Voting in Britain
  • POLS 352: Parties, Elections and Voters

Postgraduate supervision

Professor Cutts has supervised 9 doctoral students through to the completion of their PhDs. Four of these were ESRC funded scholarships. He currently co-supervises in an external capacity one PhD student (Tristan Hotham) from the University of Bath. (http://www.bath.ac.uk/polis/research/research-students/).

Professor Cutts is particularly keen to supervise students wishing to study political and electoral behaviour, party campaigning turnout, civic engagement, populist parties, social media and politics. He is especially interested in students wishing to pursue quantitative statistical methods or mixed method designs.

Research

Research interests

  • Mobilisation and campaign effects
  • Social theories of turnout
  • Contextual and geographical effects on voting
  • Theories of voting
  • Party Politics in Britain and across Europe
  • Political and civic engagement and participation
  • Political representation
  • Gender and political behaviour
  • The rise of the populist right
  • Advanced quantitative methods and statistical modelling

Current projects

  • Constituency Campaigning 2010; 2015 and 2017 General Elections (with Justin Fisher and Ed Fieldhouse)
  • Voting in Wales: The Welsh Election Study 2016 (with Roger Scully, Richard Wyn Jones and Luke Sloan)
  • Voting Together: Social Theories of Voting (with Ed Fieldhouse)
  • Liberal Democrats and the Electorate (with Andrew Russell)
  • The Future of the Left in Spain: The Rise and Fall of Podemos and PSOE (with Paul Kennedy)
  • Political Ambition in Britain (with Peter Allen)

Other activities

With Dr Isabelle Engeli he is the joint lead editor of Political Studies Review from July 2017. He is an Associate Fellow at Chatham House, Europe Programme.

Publications

Allen, P. and Cutts, D. (2017) How do gender quotas affect public support for women as political leaders, West European Politics (accepted…in press)

Cutts, D., Goodwin, M. and Milazzo, C. (2017) Defeat of the People’s Army? The 2015 British General Election and the UK Independence Party (UKIP), Electoral Studies (accepted…in press)

Allen, P. and Cutts, D. (2017) The Role of Elite Proximity and Recruitment in Progressive Political Ambition, Research and Politics (accepted…in press)

Fisher, J., Cutts, D. and Fieldhouse (2017) District Level Explanations for Supporter Involvement in Political Parties: The Importance of Electoral Factors, Party Politics (accepted…in press)

Fieldhouse, E. and Cutts, D. (2016) Shared partisanship, household norms and turnout: testing a relational theory of electoral participation, British Journal of Political Science (accepted…in press)

Goodwin, M., Cutts, D. and Janta-Lipinski, L. (2016) 'Economic Losers, Protestors, Islamophobes or the Same Old Xenophobes? Predicting Public Support for a 'Counter-Jihad Movement' Political Studies 64(1): pp4-26

Cutts, D. and Johnston, R. (2015) Constituency campaigning intensity and its impact at first and second-order elections: Wales, 2010 and 2011, Electoral Studies, Vol 39 (September): 85-101

Cutts, D. and Russell, A. (2015) From Coalition to Catastrophe: The Electoral Meltdown of the Liberal Democrats, Parliamentary Affairs, Vol 68 (supp 1): 70-87

View all publications in research portal