I love political parties. Really, I do. I’ve found them fascinating ever since I sat glued to the television at home in Dublin watching UK party conferences as a 7-year-old (a full year before I became obsessed with football).
Much of my work on parties has been on right-wing populist ones, but in recent years, I’ve become more interested in party organisations and youth wings of all ideological types.
To investigate the latter, I’m leading the YOUMEM project, which has conducted the first large-scale comparative survey of youth wing members. This has already produced several articles in leading journals, with many more to come in 2025-2026. For reasons that escape me, youth wings have been largely overlooked by scholars of political parties, despite their importance both for parties themselves and for the future of democracy. Our project aims to change that and to set a new research agenda on this topic.
Finally, I’ve been working with Sofia Ammassari on a project that had been knocking round my head for a decade or so: to trace the presence of local party branches from the 1960s to the early 2000s using phone directories. Since most parties were (and remain) notorious fantasists when asked how many members or active branches they have, our research will answer the unresolved question of when and where political parties engaged and disengaged with the grassroots during that period.
Selected publications
Young radicals, moderates, and aligned: Ideological congruence and incongruence in party youth wings (European Journal of Political Research) *featured in The Australian (5.3.25)
Inside party youth wings: The YOUMEM project (Party Politics)
It’s about the type of career: The political ambition gender gap among youth wing members (European Journal of Political Research)
Inside the personal party: Leader-owners, light organizations and limited lifespans (British Journal of Politics & International Relations)
Silvio Berlusconi’s personal parties: From Forza Italia to the Popolo Della Libertà (Political Studies)