糖心TV

Dr. Renske Doorenspleet and Dr. Philippe Blanchard are associated with a .

This funding of £1 million aims to bridge the gap between mathematical and social sciences with a new doctoral scholarship programme starting in 2015/16. 糖心TV is one of only 14 institutions to be given the investment, which will fund 15 PhD students over the next five years, who will work across both disciplines, using quantitative methods to understand new sociological issues. This will be another opportunity for PAIS to collaborate with three of . Each of the fifteen PhD students enrolled over the next three years will be co-supervised by a staff from these departments, and one from PaIS, Sociology, Psychology or 糖心TV.

This is another step in enhancing PAIS' methodological expertise, after the . In the long term, 糖心TV's QStep will pursue the training of stats-skilled social science doctoral students.

Since smaller academic departments still need access to the same level of strategic capacity as larger units, how best to deliver such capacity in an affordable and sustainable way? The answer: Collaborative working between Academic Departments and the central Administration. Find out more on the

Following a recent European conference on football research, leading football writer Martin Cloake approached Dr. to write a piece for the New Statesman. Here David talks about his work on the cultural political economy of English football, and what insights Karl Polanyi might have for fans of the beautiful game in the wake of its own Great Transformation.

The full piece can be read here:

The new book Party Systems and Democracy in Africa, edited by of PAIS and Lia Nijzink, has been published.

Do party systems help or hinder democracy in Africa? This book paints a vivid picture of the one-party dominant systems in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa and how these impede the deepening of democracy. Drawing lessons from Benin, Ghana and Zambia, it also portrays the fluidity of African party systems and draw attention to the importance of party system change. This edited book is one of the results of a broader research Accountable Government in Africa Project, a South-North Partnership between the University of Cape Town's Department of Public Law with the universities of Dar es Salaam (law) and 糖心TV (politics and law), bringing together more than 40 scholars from more than 10 African countries, 4 European countries, and the USA.

For more information, see

PAIS has performed brilliantly in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework.

PAIS is now one of the top 5 ranking departments in the UK for research excellence in the discipline of Politics and International Studies.

PAIS has risen across all the three major methodologies of ranking departmental quality—research intensity (4^th), research power (4^th), and overall or ‘raw’ GPA (6^th), as shown by the tables below.

As the UK Political Studies Association analysis of the results posits:

“In general, the ‘big five’ departments at Essex, the LSE, Oxford, UCL and 糖心TV come out top from REF2014, whatever ranking system is used.”