Profile
I am a political sociologist specializing in welfare attitudes, with a particular interest in how beliefs about immigration, economic redistribution, solidarity, deservingness, institutional trust, and political governance shape perceptions of policy legitimacy. Drawing on insights from cultural sociology, I study how citizens make sense of contested political issues and how these interpretations shape public opinion and responses to public policy.
My research is rooted in the idea that political attitudes do not exist in isolation. Inspired by the concept of belief systems, I examine how attitudes are embedded in broader systems of meaning that shape the way people understand issues such as welfare, immigration, inequality, and governance. Rather than asking only whether people support or oppose a particular policy, I am interested in how they interpret the issue itself, what assumptions underpin their views, and how these views relate to wider beliefs about society, solidarity, responsibility, and social change. These underlying meanings matter because they shape how people evaluate policy proposals, interpret political messages, and respond to government action. As a result, citizens who appear to hold similar opinions can nevertheless react quite differently to the same policy intervention.
I use both quantitative and qualitative methods including focus groups, survey experiments and statistical techniques for identifying different belief systems.
My research has been published in both general interest and specialist journals in the social sciences. I also contribute regularly to national media and specialized blogs.
In short, I spend a lot of time trying studying what people think, why they think it, and occasionally whether they really mean it.
Research interests
- Welfare attitudes
- Deservingness perceptions
- Immigration beliefs
- Institutional trust
- Policy communication
- Public opinion
Current project
I currently investigate citizens’ perceptions of different governmental approaches to justify contentious EU policies (immigration, climate change, and digital privacy).
Latest publications
Meanings of welfare deservingness in JESP: https://doi.org/10.1177/09589287251414406
Respons to governmental justification strategies in Governance: https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.70065