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 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.
My work on youth wings has also led me to consider how young people in general interact with parties. To study this in depth, Sofia Ammassari, Ferran Martinez i Coma and I have recently been awarded over $825,000 for an ARC Discovery project ‘Generation-Z engagement with political parties’. Beginning in early 2027, we will conduct surveys, focus groups, and interviews with Gen-Z and party officials in Australia, Belgium, India and Italy.
Finally, I’m working with Sofia Ammassari on a project that had been knocking round my head for years: to trace the presence of local party branches in Italy and Sweden 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 answers the unresolved question of when and where political parties engaged and disengaged with the grassroots during that period. The first publication from this project came out in December 2025 in Political Geography (see below).
Selected publications
More social, less material, more influenced by family ties: Why young women join political parties (European Journal of Political Resesarch)
The geography of the party on the ground: Local branches in Italy and Sweden in the late twentieth century (Political Geography)
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)
Silvio Berlusconi’s personal parties: From Forza Italia to the Popolo Della Libertà (Political Studies)