Visiting scholars
Tõnis Saarts
Tõnis is an Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at the Tallinn University (Estonia). Currently, he is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Nottingham (from March 2023 to February 2023), in which he is conducting research on party system institutionalization and the quality of democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. His supervisor in Nottingham is Fernando Casal Bértoa. His research interests include political parties, party systems, social cleavages, democracy and democratization, populism, and politics of Central and Eastern Europe (and the Baltic States in particular). He has published in several peer-reviewed journals such as Politics and Governance, Problems of Post-Communism, East European Politics, etc. He has also contributed to several handbooks on politics and sociology published by Palgrave and Routledge.
Visiting member: Spring and Autumn 2022
Željko Poljak
Željko is a PhD candidate and a member of the M²P (Media, Movements & Politics) research group at the Department of Political Science, University of Antwerp (Belgium). His PhD project deals with negative communication between political actors both outside of and during election campaigns. He is currently a visiting fellow at the School of Politics, University of Nottingham where he is researching negativity in UK politics (Spring Semester 2022). His research is funded by the University of Antwerp Research Fund (BOF), while his stay in Nottingham is supported by the Antwerp Doctoral School (OJO grant – Support for Young Researchers).
Visiting member: Spring 2022
David C. W. Parker
David is professor and head of political science at Montana State University. He is a scholar of legislatures, focused primarily on legislative oversight of executives and representational relationships in the U.S. Congress, the House of Commons, and the Scottish Parliament. Parker is the author of Battle for the Big Sky: Representation and the Politics of Place in the Race for the U.S. Senate (CQ Press) and The Power of Money in Congressional Campaigns, 1880-2006 (University of Oklahoma Press), as well as articles on the personal vote, divided government, oversight, Prime Minister’s Questions, and Brexit. His article, “Making a Good Impression: Resource Allocations, Home Styles, and Washington Work” (with Craig Goodman), won the 2010 Alan Rosenthal Award from the American Political Science Association. He is currently working on the politics of rurality, participation in the House of Lords, and the socialization of parliamentarians.
Parker frequently provides media commentary for local, state, and national news outlets, including the Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR’s Morning Edition, PBS’s Frontline, and the Sundance award-winning documentary Dark Money. He resides in Bozeman with his wife, children, and Peaches the dog.
Visiting member: Spring 2022
Anna M. Bagaini
Anna obtained her Ph.D in Political Sciences (Institutions and Politics) at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan in 2018, with a dissertation in Middle Eastern Studies about Israeli Politics” Lost in peace. Rise and decline of Labor Party in the framework of Israeli political history (1948-2001)”. From 2011 until 2018 she carried out academic research in Israel, taking part in the Visiting Research Fellow Program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2014 she obtained a MA Degree in Political Science (European and International Politics) at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan. Since January 2019, she is Visiting Research Fellow at REPRESENT, Research Centre for the Study of Parties and Democracy at the University of Nottingham.
Visiting member: 2019 – (…)
Hakan Yavuzyılmaz
Hakan worked as a Post-doctoral researcher at University of Nottingham, School of Politics and International Relations during from 2019 to 2020. He is also working as a Political Analyst at the Checks and Balances Network in Turkey. His research mainly focuses on political parties and party systems. More specifically, his research aims to understand the dynamics of party and party system (de) institutionalization in regime-level transitional phases such as autocratization.
Visiting member: 2019 – 2020
Max-Valentin Robert
Max-Valentin Robert received his Ph.D. in political science in January 2021 at Sciences Po Grenoble (UMR Pacte, France), where he also worked as a Temporary Lecturer and Research Assistant (Attaché Temporaire d’Enseignement et de Recherche – ATER). From August 2022 to June 2023, he worked as a research fellow at the University of Nottingham (School of Politics and International Relations), under the supervision of William T. Daniel. He participated in the Digital Society Project (DSP), and therefore contributed to a research project on the use of Twitter by candidates for the 2022 French legislative elections. He currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the ESPOL – European School of Political and Social Sciences (Catholic University of Lille) – and is involved in the Horizon Europe project “ACTEU – Towards a new era of representative democracy – Activating European citizens’ trust in times of crises and polarization”. His research interests include party systems, electoral behaviors and political parties, but also (de-)democratization processes and hybrid regimes, as well as populism, political radicalism and Turkish politics.
Visiting member: 2022 – 2023