Matt H Qvortrup

Professor Matthew Qvortrup is a specialist in referendums and direct democracy The author of several books on democracy, his latest books are Death By a Thousand Cuts: The Slow Demise of Democracy (DeGruyter 2021) and The Referendum in Britain- A History (With Lucy Atkinson and Andrew Blick, Oxford University Press 2020). He has recently published refereed articles in, among others, Government and Opposition, International Political Science Review, and Journal of Democracy. Described by the BBC as "the World's leading expert on referendums", his other books include Referendums and Ethnic Conflict (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), Angela Merkel: Europe's Most Influential Leader (Duckworth 4th Edition, 2020) and the edited volumes, Nationalism, Referendums, and Democracy (Routledge 2020) and Referendums Around the World 2nd Edition (Palgrave Macmillan 2018). First elected to a full Professorial Chair at the age of 36, he earned his doctorate in politics at Brasenose College, Oxford University, and trained as a lawyer at the College of Law, London.  Professor Qvortrup has worked as an advisor to the British Home Office, the US State Department and to the British Foreign Office. He has written op-eds for Newsweek, Chicago Tribune, Bloomberg, Prospect Magazine, The Times, and the Guardian. Matt is joint editor of European Political Science Review. He also writes the regular column 'Shorts' in the popular magazine Philosophy Now.
Supervisors: Professor Vernon Bogdanor and Alfred Stepan