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Department of Political Science

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Professor Benjamin Lauderdale

Professor Benjamin Lauderdale
Head of Department and Professor of Political Science 
Room: 1.06, 29/30 Tavistock Square
Email: b.lauderdale@ucl.ac.uk
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Biography

I am a Professor of Political Science at UCL. I have been Head of Department from October 2021. Previously, I worked as a Senior Data Science Advisor to YouGov from 2016 to 2021, and was an Associate Editor of the American Political Science Review from 2016 to 2020. I also worked at the London School of Economics (LSE) as a Lecturer, Associate Professor, and Professor from 2011 to 2018.

Research

Recently, my research has focused on developing new designs for highly multidimensional survey experiments that enable us to better measure key concepts relevant to public opinion and political behaviour. This has included: projects introducing new methods for measuring the relative importance of different issues to voters; the extent to which there are robust patterns in which kinds of political arguments are persuasive; public preferences over the composition of government spending; public attitudes towards alternative ways that governments raise tax revenues; and the extent to which political disagreement can be ascribed to moral disagreement. In addition, I am working on a textbook on social science measurement, a book on the structure of public opinion and voter behaviour, and a project examining public attitudes to democracy in the UK.

Earlier in my career, my research was focused on the development of new methods for the measurement of political preferences from large observational survey, voting, network and text datasets. This work included applications to citizens, legislators and judges across the US, UK, EU and beyond.

RPS Widget Placeholderhttps://research-reports.ucl.ac.uk/RPSDATA.SVC/pubs/BLAUD79

Teaching

At UCL I have taught ‘Measurement in Data Science’ (POLS0013) for undergraduates, ‘Introduction to Quantitative Methods’ (PUBL0055) for postgraduates, and ‘Voters, Public Opinion and Participation’ (PUBL0082) for postgraduates.
 
I supervise PhD students working in the areas of public opinion and political behaviour, representation and legislative behaviour, and in quantitative methods.