Explore UCD

UCD Home >
overlay image

Research at SPIRe

SPIRe staff and research centres are pursuing and publishing cutting-edge scholarly research on a wide variety of topics, many of which are directly relevant to the analytical needs of government and voluntary organisations at the national, European and international levels. The School's substantive and methodological strengths reflect the multi-disciplinary character of its staff.

Much of SPIRe's research activity is associated with the initiatives of the School's four research centres, all of which have strong national and international networks:

All members of SPIRe's academic staff are involved in individual and collaborative research projects in a variety of fields. For details on projects and publications, consult the staff's personal pages.

SPIRe also hosts an interdisciplinary seminar series during the academic year. 

In geographic terms, SPIRe has a long-standing reputation for excellence in the study of Irish politics (including the Republic, Northern Ireland, and cross-border issues) and European politics (including the national and EU levels). Other staff members contribute expertise on the Middle East, North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa. This geographic expertise cuts across the various thematic topics listed below.

In thematic terms, SPIRe has an international reputation for cutting-edge scholarship in the following areas, each of which has multiple academic staff including at least one at professorial level.

  1. Justice, Human Rights and Citizenship. The normative foundations of justice and the conditions for maintaining a liberal state in circumstances of pluralism; citizenship and the constitution of membership over time; the significance of cosmopolitan values for national sovereignty and global distributive justice.

  2. Nationalism, Ethnicity and Conflict. National and group identity formation; micro-macro linkages between individual identities, group behavior and institutional structures; institutional strategies for preventing or resolving identity-based conflict.

  3. Representation and Public Policy: Irish and Comparative Perspectives. State structures, political reform, and democratization; public opinion, voting and lobbying; the design and implementation of public policy.

  4. European and International Integration. The role of state, non-state and supranational actors in integration; the evolution of supranational institutions and identities; the dynamics of intergovernmental negotiation and multi-level governance.

  5. Political Economy and International Development. The determinants of economic development in industrialized and developing countries; the impact of globalization on economic development, social and ecological sustainability; the politics of international trade and finance.

  6. Politics and Data Science: The Connected_Politics Lab is an interdisciplinary hub for researchers using computational methods to study politics and society. Our research interests include computational social science; big data; machine learning; quantitative text analysis; network analysis; agent-based modelling; Bayesian statistics; data mining and visualisation.

SPIRe Seminar Series Programme 2022-23

SPIRe Seminar Series Programme 2022-23

This is the schedule for Spring Trimester, 2022-23

All seminars take place on Wednesdays from 12-1pm in our boardroom. 

For anyone else who wishes to attend virtually, please contact Dr Lucia Tiscornia at (opens in a new window)lucia.tiscornia@ucd.ie. 

Wednesday 25th Jan,  12pm Michael Coleman (University College Dublin) Rights and Non-Domination in the Social Republic
Wednesday 1st Feb, 12pm

Chelsea Estancona (University of South Carolina)

Virtual

Supply Chain Disruptions and Criminal Structures

Webinar link: (opens in a new window)https://ucd-ie.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_cdbtV0TGQ3Go4L_9DdKIJA
Wednesday 8th Feb, 12pm Redmond Scales (University College Dublin)

Aiding Control: The Effect of Foreign Aid Flows on Subnational Authoritarian Regime Control
Wednesday 15th Feb, 12pm Julia Cañas Martinez (University College Dublin) Networks, Marriage, and Status: Comparing the Men and Women of the Islamic State
Wednesday 22nd Feb, 12pm Emanuela Ferrari (University College Dublin)

Nationally negligible, locally significant: the environmental imaginary of the Shannon LNG Campaign
Wednesday 1st Mar, 12pm

Rebecca Bell-Martin (Tecnológico de Monterrey) 

Virtual

“It could have been me”: Violence, empathy and civic engagement in Mexico 

Webinar Link: (opens in a new window)https://ucd-ie.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_8v4UdH4CRA-LYgT-CuxBcA
Wednesday 8th Mar, 12pm

Jelena Radakovic (University College Dublin)

The Role of Identity Discourse in the EU Accession process with Montenegro and Serbia
Wednesday 22nd Mar, 12pm

Ezequiel González-Ocantos (University of Oxford)

In Person

Affective Polarization in Latin America

Webinar Link: (opens in a new window)https://ucd-ie.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_3LQ3ELvaQnGkxVgu1hzbvA


 
Wednesday 29th Mar, 12pm

Francesca Lessa (University of Oxford)

In Person

The Condor Trials: Transnational Repression and Human Rights in Latin America (book presentation) 

Webinar Link:(opens in a new window) https://ucd-ie.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_yZpXeUvhTPmZ_1lcSiR81w


 
Wednesday 5th April, 12pm

Carl Smith (University College Dublin)

Title TBC
Wednesday 12th April, 12pm

Joshua Alley (University College Dublin)

Alliance Politics in Democracies

Webinar Link: (opens in a new window)https://ucd-ie.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_NQL1cW1xQhyW14_HH89Tug
Wednesday 19th April, 12pm

Niamh Hardiman (University College Dublin)

Rethinking Pathways for the Periphery

Webinar Link: https://ucd-ie.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_nIxU695IQmO70i3aWQvCKw
Wednesday 26th April, 12pm

Vincent Durac (University College Dublin)

Promoting Democracy or Autocracy: the Case of Post-Uprising Egypt

Webinar Link: (opens in a new window)https://ucd-ie.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_4Qhumc7SQDO_nCKLxlreMw
Wednesday 3rd May, 12pm

Samuel Brazys (University College Dublin)

Where’s the Beef (and Chocolate)? Sector Level Aid for Trade Effectiveness in Colombia

Webinar Link: (opens in a new window)https://ucd-ie.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_mSA7uu5ySvSwhAb9ILUnpA

 

In the Dublin Political Theory Workshop we discuss work in progress in the area of policial theory widely understood including debates on applied ethics and social and legal philosophy.

If you are interested to discuss your work with us, please do not hesitate to get in touch (opens in a new window)via our blog

The Peter Mair Library
(incorporating the Richard Sinnott collection*)

The Peter Mair Library on Comparative Party Politics is located in the Boardroom of UCD School of Politics and International Relations. This collection of books and papers formed the working (office) library of the late Peter Mair from his time at the European University Institute, Florence — his final place of work up to his untimely death in August 2011.

Peter was a renowned political scientist whose work centred in particular on political parties and representative democracy (for more, see (opens in a new window)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Mair).  The book collection originated in Manchester, where Peter had moved in the 1980s after his first stint at the EUI.  In an unfortunate accident many of his books had been destroyed in a warehouse fire.  A number of Peter’s colleagues and friends clubbed together to replenish his book stocks from scratch, a measure of already just how high he was held in the esteem of other party scholars.  This book collection then followed him from Manchester to Leiden and on to his final office in Villa San Felice on the hills of San Domenico just outside Florence.  The collection (which also includes paper plans and drafts, project plans, and teaching notes) has now returned home to UCD SPIRe, Peter’s alma mater as a post-graduate student in Politics. The Peter Mair Library was kindly donated to UCD SPIRe by Peter’s family, his wife Karin and their children Cathleen, John and Tessa.

* The collection has been augmented by the gift of a selection of books on comparative politics, donated by our former colleague, Richard Sinnott (1947-2022 RIP), who was also a contemporary of Peter’s.  We are grateful to Richard, his wife Margaret and their children Gillian and Daniel for this generous donation.


Peter Mair Collection Catalogue

The Library is available for access by prior appointment.

Peter Mair Photo 3

The library in its new location after the refurbishment of the ‘SPIRe corridor’ in 2021.

A number of colleagues from Peter’s past visited UCD at an event to mark the arrival and cataloguing of the collection.

Peter Mair Collection Photo 1

Former students and colleagues of Peter Mair (L-R): Professor
Richard Sinnott (UCD); Professor David Farrell (UCD); Professor
Jean Blondel (Sienna) and Professor Lieven De Winter (Louvain)

Peter Mair Collection Photo 2

Party and comparative politics scholars examining the 
book collection (L-R): Professor David Farrell (UCD); 
Dr Derek Hutcheson (Malmo); Professor Brigid Laffan (EUI)
and Professor Richard Sinnott (UCD)

The SPIRe Podcast Series

Here you will find monthly interviews with School staff and visiting scholars to provide an insight into the workings of the oldest and largest school of its kind in the Republic of Ireland.

Computational approaches to politics

Researchers associated with this theme apply cutting-edge computational analyses to topics such as the rise of populism, political ideology, electoral campaigning, and media personalisation, as well as regime
transitions, legislative politics, policy agendas, discourse, protest behaviour, and political violence. This research theme is hosted at the Connected_Politics Laboratory. Sign up for our newsletter (opens in a new window)here 

To view the Spring 2022 Connected Politics Seminars and Workshops, click here

Each year the School of Politics and International Relations at UCD may host a small number of Adjunct Appointees, Visiting Academic Appointees, Visiting Scholars and Visiting Practitioners.1 The aim of the Affiliates Scheme is to encourage collaboration between (former) academics or policy practitioners and the SPIRe community. While the specific form this takes may differ, it is expected that Affiliates make an active contribution to the School.

For more information on the schemes and details on how to apply, click here

UCD School of Politics and International Relations (SPIRe)

School Office: G301, Newman Building, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.