Chris ProsserView profile
Senior Lecturer
Chris Prosser is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the Department of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London, within the School of Social Sciences and International Studies. He is an active political scientist specializing in elections, public opinion, and quantitative methods, with a strong focus on British politics and electoral behavior. He is co-director of the ESRC-funded British Election Study and leads another major project on democracy and social change in Britain from 1851 to 2024. Education: BA/BPsych in Politics, Philosophy, and Psychology, Australian National University MPhil in Politics, University of Oxford (2011) DPhil (PhD) in Politics, University of Oxford (2015) His research centers on understanding how institutional and historical contexts shape political thinking and electoral behavior. Key areas include public opinion dynamics, survey methodology, electoral registration and voter ID policies, political psychology (including personality and social identity), and statistical modeling. He previously focused on comparative electoral politics of European integration, especially EU referendums and party positioning. His work contributes to the UN Sustainable Development Goals related to peace, justice, and strong institutions. His recent publications reflect a strong trend in analyzing contemporary British elections, particularly the 2019 and 2024 general elections, the impact of Brexit, the rise of Reform UK, and methodological challenges in political science such as backdoor confounding in regression models. He also publishes on long-term electoral trends and historical data integration. Scientific Awards: Pippa Norris Prize (2023) – awarded to the British Election Study team by the Political Studies Association for outstanding contribution to political studies University of Manchester Faculty of Humanities Outstanding Staff Award (2020) – for excellence in postgraduate dissertation supervision Prosser actively supervises undergraduate, master’s, and PhD students in political science topics. He has received research grants from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for the British Election Study (2019–2026) and other projects. Beyond academia, he serves as a data analyst for ITV News, co-developing election result projections and contributing to the joint ITV-BBC-Sky exit poll since 2019. He is also a trustee of the McDougall Trust and sits on the editorial board of Electoral Studies , contributing to public understanding of electoral democracy. Labs and Research Teams: He is a core member of the British Election Study team, one of the longest-running and most influential survey research projects in political science. He also leads collaborative research under the project "Democracy and Social Change in Britain, 1851–2024," which integrates historical election data and census records. His work involves large-scale data analysis and methodological innovation in survey research and political behavior.
