Excellent Political Science Research
The Vice-Chancellor supports excellent research at the University of Gothenburg by strategic co-funding to researchers who receive grants from specific research programmes, such as European Research Council (ERC), Wallenberg Scholars, and Wallenberg Academy Fellows.
Bo Rothstein is a Senior Researcher and was appointed a Wallenberg Scholar in 2010 for his research on the quality of political institutions, trust, and corruption. Bo is one of the founders of The Quality of Government Institute (QoG). He received an ERC Advanced Grant 2013 for the research project The Performance of Democracies. In 2021 Bo Rothstein, the QoG Institute, and Carl Bennet AB concluded a cooperation agreement that provides the QoG Institute with SEK 12 million. Bo Rothstein held the August Röhss Professorship in Political Science at the University of Gothenburg from 1994 to 2021.
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Staffan I. Lindberg is a Professor and was appointed a Wallenberg Academy Fellow in 2013 to lead Varieties of Democracy’s international research team, to develop the V-Dem Methodology, and to found the V-Dem Institute, for which he is Director. He received an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2017 for his research on democratization and the project Failing and Successful Sequences of Democratization. In 2018 he received a Wallenberg Academy Fellow Prolongation to lead the research project Endangered Democracies: Sequences of Autocratization. Staffan has also got funding from the Swedish Research Council, a National Research Infrastructure grant in 2020 for Demscore, a consortium consisting of several high-profile research infrastructures in Sweden.
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Ellen Lust is a Professor and founder and leader of the Governance and Local Development Institute (GLD). The research at GLD aims to explain variations in political governance and local development in an attempt to promote human welfare globally. Ellen Lust was a former professor at Yale University in the United States. She was recruited to the University of Gothenburg in 2014, with support from the Swedish Research Council. The recruitment took place within the framework of a government initiative that would make it possible for Swedish universities to employ top international researchers.
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Ann Towns is a Professor. Her research pivots around questions of norms, hierarchies, and resistance in international politics, generally with a focus on gender. She was appointed a Wallenberg Academy Fellow in 2013 for her research on gender and diplomacy. Ann is the Director of the research programme Gender in Diplomacy (GenDip).
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Elin Naurin is a Professor and was appointed a Wallenberg Academy Fellow in 2017 for her research on how the individual’s views of society are impacted by pregnancy and childbirth. Elin is the Director of the Gothenburg Research Program on Pregnancy and Politics (PregDem).
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Ann-Kristin Kölln is a Professor and has devoted a large part of her research to political parties and public opinion in Europe. In 2022 she received an ERC Starting Grant for her project The Benefits of Conflict: How Factions Can Enhance Political Parties’ Electoral Performance, - INTRAPARTY.
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Aksel is an Associate Professor and was awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2023. His research deals with political representation, with a particular focus on the lack of women and young people in politics, and environmental policy in low-income countries. He will use the grant to launch the Fem-LEAD research project (Female Leadership and Effects from African Droughts) in which he will investigate how extreme weather conditions – such as droughts and other natural disasters – affect gender equality in African politics.
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ERC grant for research into extreme weather and gender equality in African politics
More about the different types of grants
ERC Grants
The European Research Council's (ERC) mission is to encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and to support investigator-driven frontier research across all fields, on the basis of scientific excellence.
To the European Research Council's website
Wallenberg Scholars
The programme focuses on Sweden’s leading senior researchers. The research is funded by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
Wallenberg Academy Fellows
Wallenberg Academy Fellows is a long-term programme that addresses young researchers. The research is funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
UGOT Challenges is a unique research initiative where the University of Gothenburg invests 300 million SEK in six multidisciplinary research centres. One of them, Centre for Collective Action Research (CeCAR) is hosted by the Department of Political Science. The centre focuses on one of the most pressing challenges of today: Large-Scale Collective Action (LSCA). This is a challenge that needs to be addressed in order to overcome most of our current social, environmental and health problems.