Internal Research Fellows

Cecilia Testa

Professor of Political Economy

Professor Cecilia Testa earned a PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has been Professor at University of Nottingham since 2014 having previously been at Royal Holloway University of London.  

She previously lectured also at Erasmus University (Rotterdam), the London School of Economics, and the University of Essex. She held visiting positions at MIT, the Australian National University and the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Cecilia’s research interests lie in the area of political economy, with a focus on comparative institutions, special interest politics, corruption, distributive politics and migration policy. Her work has been published in journals like the British Journal of Political Science, the European Economic Review, the Journal of the European Economic Association and the Journal of Politics.

Valeria Rueda

Assistant Professor in Economics

Valeria Rueda joined the School of Economics in 2019. She received a PhD in Economics from Sciences Po, Paris in 2016. After that, she was a Career Development Fellow at the University of Oxford (Pembroke College), where she was associated with the Economic and Social History Research Group.

Her research investigates historical determinants of spatial inequalities of economic outcomes, health, and political participation. She has devoted significant attention to the role of culture in shaping persistent development patterns.

Mattia Bertazzini

Assistant Professor in Economics

Mattia gained a PhD in Economic History from LSE in 2019.  He joined University of Nottingham as an Assistant Professor in September 2023 having previously been a Prize Postdoctoral Fellow in Economics at Nuffield College, University of Oxford.  His research lies at the intersection of economic history, political economy, economic geography and development.

Emilie Sartre

Assistant Professor in Economics

Emilie received a PhD in Economics from CREST-Institut Polytechnique de Paris in September 2021.  She joined School of Economics in Nottingham in September 2023 having been a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown University, affiliated with the Brown Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.  Emilie works on public economics, political economy, and public finance. 

Daniel Seidmann

Professor of Economic Theory

Professor Daniel Seidmann holds a PhD in Economics from the LSE. He has been Professor of Economics at Nottingham since 2003, having previously been employed by LSE, Trinity College Dublin, and Newcastle University.

Daniel’s research uses game-theoretic methods to study bilateral and multilateral negotiations and strategic information transmission. He has applied his results on bargaining to explore the process of government formation and the effects of varying the quota or the deadline on agreed outcomes. He has applied his research on communication to study the effects of a right to silence, and to consider how the order of presenting evidence affects trial outcomes.

His research has been published in leading journals such as Econometrica, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies and Journal of Economic Theory.

Facundo Albornoz

Professor of Economics

Facundo Albornoz holds a PhD in Economics from the EHESS/Paris School of Economics. He joined the University of Nottingham in 2015, where he is currently an Professor and Head of School.

Before coming to Nottingham he held academic positions at the University of Birmingham and the Universidad de San Andrés in Argentina. He is a Research Fellow of the Argentine National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), the Leverhulme Centre for Research on Globalisation and Economic Policy (GEP) and the Nottingham Interdisciplinary Centre for Economic and Political Research (NICEP).

Facundo works in a variety of research areas such as international trade (firm export dynamics), education policy (behavioural interactions within the school system), cultural dynamics and international political economics (the effect of foreign interventions on conflict and democracy), with an underlying common interest in development economics.

He has published in academic journals such as the Journal of International Economics, Journal of Development Economics and Journal of the European Economic Association. His research has been funded by the ESRC and the British Academy, and he has undertaken advisory work for agencies such as the World Bank, IADB and the OEI.

Abigail Barr

Professor of Economics

Professor Abigail Barr holds a DPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford. In 2011 she joined the University of Nottingham. Before coming to Nottingham, she was a researcher at the Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) and the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford. She is an associate of the Nuffield Centre for Experimental Social Science, Oxford, and the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

Her research focuses on the socially embedded decision-maker. Four themes have dominated her work to date: the role of other-regarding preferences in individual decision-making; how people set up and hold each other to mutually beneficial agreements; citizens’ willingness and ability to hold public service providers to account; and the factors and mechanisms determining individual preferences and values.

Her work has been published in Science, the Economic Journal, the American Journal of Economics: Applied Economics, the Journal of the European Economic Association, the Journal of Experimental Political Science, and the Journal of Public Economics and several other peer reviewed journals.

Her ongoing research projects include “International anti-corruption laws and local social norms: Interactions and implications for policy” and “Financial decision-making, gender and social norms”.

Neema Begum

Assistant Professor in British Politics

Neema received a PhD in Politics from the University of Bristol in 2020. She was previously a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Manchester, Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity. Her research is on British ethnic minority political attitudes, representation and voting behaviour.

Roberto Bonfatti

Associate Professor in Economics

Dr Roberto Bonfatti holds a PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics. He is Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Padua and holds a part-time position in the School of Economics at Nottingham.   

His research lies at the intersection of international trade, political economy, and economic history. Among his topics of interest are the relation between trade and the rise and fall of colonial empires; trade and war; the economic legacy of empires, particularly in terms of the international specialization of former colonies; and the political economy of the natural resource trade. His research has been published in the Journal of International Economics.

Fernando Casal Bértoa 

Associate Professor in Comparative Politics

Dr Fernando Casal Bértoa holds a PhD in Social and Political Science from the European University Institute. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham and was previously a Nottingham Research Fellow and a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Leiden.

Fernando is currently working on a large-scale research project on The Institutionalization of European Party Systems since 1848 (whogoverns.eu). He is interested in issues related to political parties and party systems, especially in new “Third Wave” democracies or micro-states.

He is also part of Professor Ingrid van Biezen’s team working on the “Legal Regulation of Political Parties in Post-war Europe” (funded by the European Research Council – ERC) and OSCE/ODHIR expert on party regulation. His work has been published in journals such as Party Politics and the International Political Science Review among others.

William Daniel

Assistant Professor in Comparative Politics

William Daniel joined the School of Politics and International Relations at Nottingham in September 2019 as Assistant Professor in Comparative Politics, where he also serves as deputy director for the Research Centre for the Study of Parties and Democracy (REPRESENT). He earned his PhD in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 2013, an MA in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh (2010) and a BA (Hons.) in French and Political Science from Wake Forest University (2008). William’s research interests lie at the intersection of comparative politics and international relations, with a particular interest in comparative institutions, the politics of representation, and empirical research design. His interest in political economy stems mostly from his substantive expertise in the politics of European integration.

Gianni De Fraja

Professor of Economics

Professor Gianni de Fraja is Professor of Economics at the University of Nottingham, and a fellow of CEPR. He has a DPhil from Oxford, and has previously held Chairs in York and Leicester and visiting posts in Tokyo, Bonn, Barcelona, and Rome.

He has written around 60 papers in leading international academic journals, including the Review of Economic Studies, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Economic Journal and the Journal of Public Economics.

His policy oriented research has centred on theoretical aspects of competition among state owned and private firms, on the regulation of utilities, and on the design of health policies. His recent current focus is on economics aspect of education policies.

Bouwe Dijkstra

Associate Professor in Economics

Bouwe has been with the School of Economics since August 2001. He was promoted to Associate Professor in January 2009. His research is in the areas of political economy and environmental economics, which has led to publications in the European Economic Review, European Journal of Political Economy , Public Choice and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, among others. He is interested in the theory and application of emissions trading and the links between international trade and the environment. He has recently taken an interest in the economics of the informal sector.

Markus Eberhardt

Associate Professor in Economics

Markus Eberhardt joined the School of Economics in September 2011 as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Economics and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2017. Prior to coming to Nottingham he held an ESRC post-doctoral research fellowship at the Centre for the Study of African Economies in the Department of Economics at Oxford, where he also completed his Masters and PhD. His first degree was in Modern Chinese Studies and he has spent over three years studying and conducting research in China.. His current research interests include financial crises, Qing China in the 18th and 19th centuries, democracy and economic development, and knowledge spillovers/absorptive capacity.

Giovanni Facchini

Professor of Economics

Professor Giovanni Facchini holds a PhD in Economics from Stanford University. He joined the School of Economics at Nottingham in 2012 from Erasmus University in Rotterdam, where he also held a Chair in Economics. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London, a Research Fellow at the CES-Ifo institute in Munich, at IZA in Bonn, an External Fellow at CReAM and the coordinator of the International Migration Program at the Centro Studi Luca d’Agliano in Turin.

His recent research focuses on the processes through which immigration policies are shaped. He has also worked on the income distribution effects of economic reforms and on the formation of preferential trading arrangements.

His papers have been published in journals like the American Economic Journal, the Journal of the European Economic Association, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of International Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, among others. Giovanni’s scholarly activities have been supported by grants from the NORFACE consortium, the European Union and the World Bank.

Kevin Fahey

Assistant Professor 

Dr Fahey joined the University of Nottingham in Autumn 2021, having earned his PhD from Florida State University in 2016, and held postings at Cardiff University and Swansea University. His research explores the incentives of political elites using quantitative statistical methods, particularly when they diverge from electoral incentives. His research has been published in outlets including Electoral Studies, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and State Politics & Policy Quarterly.

David Gill

Professor of International Relations

David James Gill is a Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations. His research interests include strategic studies and economic history. David’s work appears in the Economic History Review, Foreign Affairs, Journal of Cold War Studies, International Affairs, and the Journal of Strategic Studies.

He has published two books, Britain and the Bomb (Stanford University Press) and Divided Allies (Cornell University Press).

Paul M Heywood

Sir Francis Hill Professor of European Politics

Professor Paul Heywood graduated with an MA in Politics (First Class) from the University of Edinburgh, and did postgraduate studies in Madrid and at the LSE, from where he received his MSc (Econ) and PhD (Politics). Before joining Nottingham, he taught at the University of Glasgow and at the University of London. He also worked for the Economist Intelligence Unit, London (1989-93).

Professor Heywood is author, co-author or editor of 14 books and more than 80 journal articles and book chapters. His research focuses on political corruption, institutional design and state capacity in contemporary Europe.

Current funded research includes an ESRC/Hong Kong project on Integrity Management in the UK, HK and China, and an EU FP7 project, ANTICORRP, on anti-corruption policies. He is also currently the UK Local Research Correspondent on Corruption (2012-14) for the European Commission’s DG Home Affairs.

Marit Hinnosaar

Assistant Professor in Economics

Marit Hinnosaar holds a PhD in Economics from Northwestern University. She joined University of Nottingham in 2020 and is also a Research Affiliate of CEPR. Her research is in empirical industrial organization and digital economics. She studies consumer behavior in the grocery market, including topics related to the demand for healthy and unhealthy foods, the demand for alcohol, and the health consequences of public policies. Her research in digital economics uses experiments to measure contributions to online public goods and the real-world impact of online information repositories such as Wikipedia.

Nicole Janz

Assistant Professor in International Relations

Gaining a PhD in politics and international studies from the University of Cambridge, Nicole taught statistical methods for social scientists there too.

In her research, she examines the effects of foreign direct investment on repression and labour rights; how expropriation hinders human rights; judicial delays, impunity and corruption; and how human rights shaming influences foreign investors.

Nicole is an advocate for research transparency, serving as an ambassador for the Center for Open Science and co-founding the Political Science Replication Initiative. She blogs at https://politicalsciencereplication.wordpress.com

Tyler Kustra

Assistant Professor

Tyler Kustra uses mathematical modeling and statistical techniques to understand international relations. His research focuses on political violence, economic sanctions and foring policy formation. 

Jan Meyer-Sahling

Professor of Political Science

Professor Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling holds a PhD in Politics from LSE. In September 2004 he joined the University of Nottingham where he is a Professor.

Previously, he was a Tutorial Fellow in Comparative Public Administration and Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Lecturer in European Politics at Birkbeck College, London. In 2013-2014, Jan-Hinrik was a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence.

His recent research has centred on topics related to civil service reform in Central and Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans, problems of corruption in post-communist Europe, the Europeanisation of national political systems in Europe East and West, and the institutionalisation of political time in Europe.

Jan-Hinrik’s research has been published in the European Journal of Political Research, Journal of European Public Policy, Public Administration, International Review of Administrative Sciences, Governance, West European Politics, East European Politics and Public Administration and Development.

Maria Montero

Professor of Economics

Maria Montero joined University of Nottingham in 2002 after earning a PhD in Economics from Tilburg University, and is currently Professor of Economics. Maria was a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Dortmund from 2000 to 2002, and an IKERBASQUE Visiting Professor at UPV/EHU from 2013 to 2014.

Her research focuses on voting and legislative bargaining using game-theoretic models and laboratory experiments. Specifically, she has investigated questions such as the effect of the enlargement of a voting body on the balance of power between its members, the performance of different decision rules in committees and the trade-off between efficiency and fairness.

Her work has been published in academic journals such as the Journal of the European Economic Association, Economic Journal, Games and Economic Behavior and American Political Science Review.

Atsuyoshi Morozumi

Assistant Professor in Economics

Dr Atsuyoshi Morozumi joined University of Nottingham in September 2009.

His general research interests are macroeconomics and fiscal policy. Specifically, he studies how different components of public spending and revenue may have different macroeconomic effects, in the contexts of both business cycles and growth/development. He also works on the electoral effects on the composition of public spending and revenue.

Scott Moser

Associate Professor in Politics

Dr Scott Moser received a PhD in Political Economy in 2007 from Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Social and Decision Sciences after earning a BA in mathematics/economics from New College of the University of South Florida in 2001.

Prior to arriving in Nottingham, he has held positions in the department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin, as an assistant professor and Nuffield College, University of Oxford, as a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow (2007-2010).

His research interests can be described broadly as applied social choice, and specifically involve game theory, voting theory, collective choice (especially from tournaments), legislative institutions, and statistical modeling (especially latent class models of text and non-parametric Bayesian inference). Pursuing these research interests involves development and testing of theories of collective decision making.

Johanna Rickne

Professor of Economics

Johanna Rickne is a Professor in Economics at the Swedish Institute for Social Research at Stockholm University and part-time Professor in the School of Economics. She has previously worked at SIPA, Columbia University and held visiting positions at Berkeley, Yale and Harvard.

Her current research is in labour economics, political economics, and gender economics. Previously she has worked extensively on the Chinese economy.

Simon Toubeau

Assistant Professor in Politics and International Relations

Dr Simon Toubeau holds a PhD in Social and Political Science from the European University Institute and an MPhil in European Politics from Oxford. He joined the University of Nottingham in 2015 as an Assistant Professor. He has previously been a Research Fellow at University of Edinburgh and the Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

His research interests lie in the areas of comparative European politics, regionalism and federalism. He is the author of several book chapters and articles published in journals such as the European Journal of Political Economy and the British Journal of Political Science.

Richard Upward

Professor of Labour Economics

Richard Upward is Professor of Labour Economics. His research interests are primarily in applied labour economics and applied microeconometrics.

Cees van der Eijk

Professor of Social Science Research Methods

Professor Cees van der Eijk holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Amsterdam. Since 2004 he has been Professor of Social Science Research Methods at Nottingham; previously he was Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam.

His research focusses on research methods and on comparative politics (in particular the interrelationships between voters, parties/political entrepreneurs, and media). His work has been published in numerous articles and books from leading publishers such as Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and the University of Michigan Press.

He has been Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator on a large number of election studies, including the Dutch National Election Studies, the European Election Studies, and the British Election Study. He currently leads a work-package on data communities in the Horizon2020 project Social Sciences and Humanities Open Cloud (SSHOC).

Annemarie Walter

Assistant Professor in Politics and International Relations

Dr Annemarie Walter took up her position of Assistant Professor at University of Nottingham in 2017, having previously been a Research Fellow at Nottingham since 2014.  She graduated in political science at Leiden University and received her PhD in 2012 at Amsterdam University (UVA) where she was Assistant Professor 2012-2014.

She is working on her research project “CSNCC”: Comparative Study of Negative Campaigning and its Consequences. Her broad areas of research interests include election campaigns, political communication, political parties and party systems, party strategy and electoral behaviour.