Professor Edward Morgan-Jones

Edward Morgan-Jones joined the School of Politics and International Relations at Kent as Lecturer in Comparative Politics in 2009 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2014 and Reader in 2019. Since 2020 he serves as Divisional Director of Graduate Studies in the Division of Human and Social Sciences. Professor Morgan-Jones received his DPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford in 2004 and before joining the School was Research Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Keble College, University of Oxford.

His research investigates the origins, effects and legitimacy of political institutions in developed, developing and post-conflict democracies. He has investigated these questions broadly, examining both how institutions work as well as citizen perspectives on their operation. Project have addressed constitutional choice, the impact of semi-presidential and parliamentary government democratic accountability and representation, the impact of constitutional rules on cabinet composition and termination and the influence of prime ministers and directly and indirectly elected presidents on early election calling.

Recent research uses survey experiments to examine citizen perspectives on the design of peace settlements, borders and other aspects of post conflict institution building and policy making. He is a co-investigator on the ORA-ESRC funded Inclusive Peace Project (£1.4 million) – which brings together collaborators from around the world to investigate the origins, operations and legitimacy of inclusive political institutions in post-war context. He also senior staff (co-investigator) for the ERC funded Peace Return Project (€2.5 million) which investigates the contexts, including peace settlement contexts, in which migrants forced to leave their homes because of violence choose (or not) to return home.

His research has been published in the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Research and Journal of Conflict Resolution among other outlets. He has also published a book entitled ‘Constitutional Bargaining in Russia 1990-1993: Institutions and Uncertainty’. Professor Morgan-Jones regularly presents his work to the policy community as well as commenting in the media on the policy implications of his research.  

• Constitutional choice and its consequences
• Parliamentary and semi-presidential regimes
• Cabinet composition, termination and early elections
• Democratic accountability, representation and policy making
• Citizens' attitudes toward peace settlements and border arrangement
  

Undergraduate

• POLI6610 Fact, Evidence, Knowledge and Power
  

Edward has a successful record of research supervision and was awarded the University of Kent's Graduate School's prize for Research Supervision in 2019. He has supervised six PhD research students through to completion. His aim in supervision is to enable students to develop research projects that make clear theoretical contributions, tested in an empirically rigorous manner, often with the collection of original data and written up with an eye to a wider disciplinary audience and broader policy debates. His research students have published their dissertation work in internationally recognised scholarly journals such as Electoral Studies, European Journal of Political Research, Party Politics and the Journal of Peace Research and gone on to careers in academia and public service. 

He welcomes research students interested in questions related to the choice, operation and effects of political institutions including constitutions, political parties, electioral systems, executives and legislatures either comparatively or in particular countries.

Edward is also interested in supervising projects that address questions related to border institutions and peace settlement institutional design in post-conflict countries or divided societies, as well as citizen attitudes towards these insitutions and the peace settlement solutions they offer. 

Current research students

Morvan Lallouet
Explaining Russian Liberalism Successes and Failures: The Case of Alexei Navalny

Past research students

Ian Rowe (2015)
Participation and Deliberation in Network Publics: The Case of Social Media Sites

James Downes (2017)
Explaining Centre Right Party Success in an era of Populism

Dee Goddard (2019)
The Appointment of Women to Ministerial Positions Across Europe: Presence, Portfolios and Policy

Emir Kulov (2019)
Party Institutionalization in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan: Between Political Uncertainty and the Logic of Electoral Mobilization

Robert Nagel (2019)
Gendered Influences on Conflict Resolution in Intrastate Conflicts

Daniel Belling (2020)
The Politics of Fiscal Monitoring

Member of the American Political Science Association and the European Political Science Association.