Welcome

I am a Professor in Social Statistics in the Department of Social Statistics at the University of Manchester.

My research applies statistical modelling and network science to the politics of public policy. I study things like political networks, ideology, policy debates, the role of interest groups and advocacy in agenda-setting and decision making, and institutional design in international organisations. In social statistics, I am particularly interested in parametric models for temporal network data. I have also contributed several software packages for social research. Most of my research is in the domain of complex social systems and focuses on networks. Have a look at my Google Scholar profile.

My work on discourse network analysis combines network science and content analysis to build theory on how policy debates work. My software Discourse Network Analyzer (DNA) and its associated R package rDNA have been used in many projects and more than 300 theses and publications. You can watch a tutorial video on YouTube as a primer. The basic idea of DNA is that policy debates among elite actors (e.g., interest groups, legislators, government agencies etc) in text data such as newspaper articles or legislative testimony can be analysed as temporal networks. The DNA software allows you to annotate positive or negative statements actors make about concepts and then export them into various kinds of networks. We can then apply the whole array of network-analytic methods to the problem in order to identify changing coalitions in the policy debate, polarisation of debates, opinion leadership, and other things of interest. I have spent much time figuring out the right transformations and methods for DNA that operationalise theories in politics/policy.

I am also the author and maintainer of the texreg R package, which creates regression tables in various formats. The package is in the 96th percentile of R package downloads. It takes more than 100 statistical models and creates highly customisable regression tables for LaTeX, HTML, Word, ASCII, and inclusion in Markdown documents. I have added innovative ways to gauge user feedback through the use of a "praise" function.

From 2022 to 2027, I am a Mercator Fellow in the DFG Research Training Group 2720: "Digital Platform Ecosystems (DPE)" at the University of Passau in Germany and concluded a research stay as a visiting professor in 2024. I previously completed longer research visits at Columbia University, the Ohio State University, and the University of Maryland College Park.

Before joining Manchester in April 2024, I was a Professor of Comparative Politics in the Department of Government at the University of Essex for five years. Until 2019, I was a professor (and previously senior lecturer) in research methods in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. I am also active in the APSA Section on Political Networks and held leadership positions in the section in the past.

At Manchester, I teach SOST70151 Statistical Foundations, parts of SOST71032 Statistical Models for Social Networks, and SOST70092 Complex Social Systems and Simulation (from 2026/27). I previously taught on a variety of topics in political science and public policy. I occasionally teach summer school courses (for example, at the MethodsNet Summer School in Social Research Methods), mostly on statistical network analysis or discourse networks.