Professor Will Jennings

Will Jennings is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and Associate Dean (Research & Enterprise) for the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Southampton. Previously I was a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. I completed my doctorate at the University of Oxford in 2004. My research is concerned with questions relating to public policy and political behaviour. I have written extensively on agenda-setting, public opinion, electoral behaviour, political parties, and the governance of mega-projects and mega-events. I am a methodological pluralist, using both quantitative and qualitative methods.

I am Co-Director of the UK Policy Agendas Project, and a member of the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) research network – winner of the 2019 Lijphart/Przeworski/Verba Dataset Award from the American Political Science Association's Comparative Politics section. I was a member of the independent inquiry instigated by the British Polling Council and Market Research Society to investigate the performance of the pre-election polls at the 2015 general election. I have been Elections Analyst for Sky News since 2017 (and previously was a member of the BBC election analysis team for the 2010 general election). I am a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and was a Trustee of the UK Political Studies Association (serving as its lead on research and impact from 2014 to 2019).

I sit on the editorial boards of the British Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Studies, Political Studies Review, Journal of European Public Policy and European Political Science. My research has been published in journals including the American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Research, Public Opinion Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, Political Science and Research Methods, Governance, Public Administration, Political Studies, Journal of European Public Policy, Electoral Studies, Party Politics, Political Geography, British Journal of Criminology, Social Forces, Contemporary British History and the Political Quarterly in addition to numerous chapters published in edited volumes. Olympic Risks, my book about the governance of the Olympic Games and the Olympic movement, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2012. Policy Agendas in British Politics (co-authored with Peter John, Anthony Bertelli and Shaun Bevan) was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013. My book with Jane Green, The Politics of Competence: Parties, Public Opinion and Voters was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. My book with Nick Clarke, Gerry Stoker and Jonathan Moss, The Good Politician (also with Cambridge University Press) was published in 2018. The British General Election of 2019 (with Robert Ford, Tim Bale and Paula Surridge), the 21st volume in the prestigious 'Nuffield election series' launched by R. B. McCallum in 1945 and continued by Sir David Butler, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2021. I am currently working on a manuscript on The Changing Electoral Geography of England and Wales (with Jamie Furlong) due out with Oxford University Press in 2023.