Our PhD students go on to work in a variety of roles; from academia to civil service, charities, NGOs and international organisations. Here are some examples of recent graduates.
Guy Aitchison
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Ivica Petrikova
"I am currently听a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Royal Holloway University of London. I am doing research on various issues - food security governance, economic inequality, and the link between populism and听development aid. I teach Politics of Development and other development-related courses for both UG and PG."
Markus Kollberg听
Markus Kollberg is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at Humboldt University Berlin. He received his PhD from University College London (UCL) in 2023. During his PhD, he was a visiting researcher at Yale University and the University of Vienna. Previously, Markus has worked as a freelance journalist for various media outlets covering German, British and International Politics. He regularly organises and teaches civic education workshops in Germany and Eastern Europe.
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Sofia Collignon
Prior to joining Royal Holloway,听Sofia was a postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Strathclyde, working as part of the team behind the ESCR-funded听Representative Audit of Britain听project, part of听Parliamentary Candidates UK.听During that time,听she was also part of the听Constitution Unit team. Sofia's main research interests include: a) the study of candidates, elections and parties, b) harassment and intimidation of candidates and c) framing contests in the formation of public opinion. Her research is comparative in nature and she uses quantitative methods.听She has published in journals such as Party Politics, West European Politics and Electoral Studies.
Francisco da Costa Marques听
In 2017 I took a job at the Minister of Education, working with Human Rights Education and Diversity. Having a direct involvement with HRE policy was a particularly enriching and challenging experience, given the urgency the issue deserves and the opposition it unfortunately faces even within the government. Nowadays, since the beginning of 2019, I am working in the Bolsa Fam铆lia, a national conditional cash transfer program. The program aims to reduce short-term poverty by monthly hand-outs and to break intergenerational cycles of poverty by mandating health and education requirements.
Besides my career in the civil service, I have been trying to keep in touch with the academia, as an independent researcher. In September 2018 I had a chapter of my PhD thesis published in one of the leading interdisciplinary journals in the field of the social sciences in Brazil, the听Revista Brasileira de Ci锚ncias Sociais."
Lotte Hargrave听
Before joining Manchester, Lotte was the Head of Data Science at the public opinion consultancy Deltapoll. Her work at Deltapoll involved managing and fielding surveys for clients, carrying out research into British politics and public opinion, delivering quantitative presentations and reports, and data analysis and visualisations of all political trackers including Westminster vote intention, economic competence, and leadership approval ratings.
Lotte completed her PhD at 皇家华人 in 2022. In her thesis, supervised by Professor Meg Russell, Dr Jack Blumenau and Professor Jennifer Hudson, she examined the dynamic influence of gender stereotypes on politicians鈥 behaviour and voter attitudes. Her thesis was awarded the 2023 SPP鈥檚 鈥淏est Thesis Award鈥, in addition to the 2023 PSA McDougall Trust Prize for the best dissertations in elections, electoral systems, and representation.听
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Orly Siow
"I am a Lecturer in the Politics of Gender at Newcastle University. My听PhD at 皇家华人 analysed the combined effects of political听candidates鈥 race and gender听on press coverage of their campaigns听in the US and UK. The thesis was awarded SPP鈥檚 2019 Best PhD Dissertation Prize as well as the prestigious听2019 Joni Lovenduski Prize. More widely, I use intersectionality as a theoretical framework to investigate how women's political representation varies along听racial, religious, class and partisan lines.听Currently, I am analysing minority women's听substantive representation in the UK Parliament. I also consult听on the advancement of women鈥檚 interests through civil society and development programming, and have been funded by UNESCO,听Australian听Aid,听Developmental Leadership Program and Pacific Leadership Program."
Matia Vannoni
Matia Vannoni is a Lecturer in Public Policy in the Department of Political Economy, King's College London. From November 2016 to August 2018, Matia was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research (IGIER), Bocconi University, where he worked on a project which used advanced text analysis (based on computational linguistics) to study delegation, legislative complexity and economic growth.
Matia completed his PhD at 皇家华人 (awarded in February 2017). He also holds a Bachelor鈥檚 and Master鈥檚 Degree in Political Science from the University of Trento and an MRes from the LSE.
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Andreas Juon
Kasim Khorasanee
Julio Montero
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Alice Moore
Alice is an Assistant Professor in Public Management and Public Policy in the School of Government at the University of Birmingham. Her research explores how governments can work effectively with external organisations to deliver public services and meet urgent policy challenges. She is working on a project that investigates how different forms of outsourcing and partnerships change the way people engage with public services and their broader attitudes towards the state. She continues to collaborate with colleagues from UCL on projects that investigate how relationships between communities and government are changing through innovative practices in Grimsby, UK, and how municipal governments are collaborating to take advantage of and meet the challenges of rapid technological change.
Alice completed her PhD at 皇家华人 in 2024. Her thesis, supervised by Professor Mark Esteve, Dr Colin Provost, and Professor Christian Schuster, explored how competition in public procurement markets shapes the way contracts are managed and how management approaches likewise influence those markets. A chapter from this thesis won the Christopher Pollitt Prize for Best Paper at the 2024 conference of the International Research Society for Public Management.
Ruxandra Serban听
Ruxandra Serban is an Associate Lecturer (Teaching) in Democratic and Authoritarian Politics in the Department of Political Science at 皇家华人. From 2019 to 2023, Ruxandra was an LSE Fellow in Qualitative Research Methods in the Department of Methodology at the LSE. Her research agenda focuses on parliamentary procedures and practices in different countries, and her work has been published in comparative politics journals such as Government and Opposition and the British Journal of Politics and International Relations.听
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Ruxandra was awarded her PhD from UCL in January 2020. Her thesis, supervised by Professor Meg Russell and Professor Alan Renwick, investigated parliamentary mechanisms through which prime ministers are questioned by parliamentarians in different countries, placing the UK鈥檚 PMQs in a comparative context for the first time. During her PhD she worked as a Research Assistant at the Constitution Unit. She also holds an MSc in Democracy and Comparative Politics (2014) from UCL.