I am senior lecturer and director of the MPA programme at the University of the West of Scotland. I am also honorary senior lecturer at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom, and research fellow at the Public Governance Institute at KU Leuven, Belgium. I currently serve as Vice Chair Communications in the United Kingdom Association for Public Administration - UKAPA. I am member of the Editorial Board of the UKAPA journal Teaching Public Administration.

I study political and administrative elites and policy making both at the apex of government, in the executive triangle of ministers, political advisers and senior civil servants, as well as in parliaments. My research covers a variety of themes, from elite careers to policy making processes and the machinery of government, to ethical standards, transparency and accountability. It crosses the boundaries of comparative politics, public policy and administration, it is multi-method and for its most part internationally comparative.

Here are my active research lines

Executive Triangle

I study executive politicians, top civil servants, and ministerial advisers (‘the executive triangle’) from an internationally comparative perspective. I currently represent the UK in the Management Committee of the EU Cost-Action Project CA22150 – Comparative Research on the Executive Triangle in Europe (CoREx) and also lead Working Group 4 on Accountability and Transparency in Executive Triangle in Europe. Action CA22150 - COST.

I am also partner to the international Scientific Research Network: The Executive Triangle: politicians, ministerial advisers, and senior civil servants, which is led by the KU Leuven Public Governance Institute and funded by the Research Organisation Flanders (FWO) FWO Scientific Research Network — Public Governance Institute

Parliamentary elites

I study the circulation of legislators in parliaments, also known as legislative or parliamentary turnover. My research originally focused on Western Europe and was part of my PhD Doctoral research: Determinants of Parliamentary Turnover in Western Europe (2014-2017) — Public Governance Institute It has now expanded to cover most legislatures around the world.  

Policy advice, knowledge utilization, advisory systems

I study policy advice and its utilization, as well as policy advisory systems. I have been involved as an invited expert in working group 4 'The policy advisory roles of political scientists in Europe', in the Cost Action project Professionalization and Social Impact of European Political Science, which is now closed. CA15207 - COST. 

Environmental policy implementation

Together with colleagues at the University of Exeter we study  environmental policy implementation deficits through our own newly developed framework, the Capacity - Intentionality Framework, that focuses both on institutional/governance capacity problems as well as on the strategic preferences of actors.