Dr Laurence Cooley

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• PhD Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, 2013
• MA Political Science (Research Methods), University of Birmingham, 2008
• MA Politics, Queen's University Belfast, 2006
• BSc Economics and Politics, Bath, 2004
• Associate, Higher Education Academy

Laurence Cooley is a political scientist whose research investigates the relationship between social identities and political institutions, with a focus on power-sharing institutions and the politics of the census in deeply divided societies. Between 2017 and 2019, Laurence was an ESRC Future Research Leader, and he has been Lecturer in Comparative Politics in the Department of Political Science and International Studies since September 2021. He previously taught in both the Centre for Russian and East European Studies (CREES) and the International Development Department (IDD). He has also been a Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Natural and Built Environment at Queen's University Belfast.

Laurence came to the University of Birmingham in 2007 to start an ESRC-funded MA and PhD. Previously, he studied at the University of Bath and Queen's University Belfast, and worked at the Institute for Public Policy Research in London. His PhD on the EU's approach to conflict resolution in the Western Balkans was supervised by Thomas Diez, Michelle Pace and Tim Haughton. During his PhD, Laurence spent time as a visiting student at both the Centre for EU Studies at Ghent University and the Penn Program in Ethnic Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania.

In 2013, Laurence was appointed as a Teaching Fellow in IDD, following a period as a visiting lecturer in POLSIS and CREES and as part-time Impact and Outreach Assistant for the GSDRC. Between February 2017 and January 2019, he was a Research Fellow funded by the ESRC Future Research Leaders scheme, working on a project about the relationship between power sharing and the politics of the census in deeply divided societies. Linked to this project, he was also a Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Natural and Built Environment at Queen's University Belfast between June 2017 and January 2020.

Laurence rejoined POLSIS as Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in Comparative Politics in September 2021. He has been a member of the board of Research Committee 14, 'Politics and Ethnicity' of the International Political Science Association since July 2021 and vice-chair of that RC since July 2023.

Laurence's work has been quoted in the UK House of Commons and he recently gave evidence to Parliament's Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, on the implications of the 2021 census results.

• Research Design (second-year undergraduate)
• Conflict and Peace: Theory and Practice (final-year undergraduate)

Laurence's core research interest is in the relationship between social identities and political institutions. His PhD research, which was undertaken in Birmingham's Department of Political Science and International Studies, explored the EU's approach to conflict resolution in the Western Balkans, and sought to explain the apparent preference of EU actors for consociational power-sharing mechanisms of managing conflict in deeply divided societies. The main outcome of this research was his first monograph, published as part of the Routledge Studies in European Foreign Policy series in 2019.

From February 2017 to January 2019, Laurence worked on a postdoctoral project, funded by the ESRC Future Research Leaders scheme, which investigated the relationship between census politics and the design of power-sharing institutions, with a particular empirical focus on Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kenya, Lebanon and Northern Ireland. He is currently working on a number of publications resulting from this project and from a further stream of research, funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant, into the politics of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) data collection through national censuses.

Member of:

• Association for the Study of Nationalities
• International Political Science Association (Research Committee 14: Politics and Ethnicity)
• Political Studies Association (Ethnopolitics Specialist Group)
• European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group on South East Europe

Professional appointments:

• Co-editor, International Studies Today (2012-2014)