Research
How does politics happen? When we do politics, what are we doing? And how do we know what to do?
We commonly distinguish between knowing and doing, between politics and policy and between policy and practice. But politics and policy are themselves practices, and those who do politics and make policy are themselves practitioners. So what do they do, exactly? What do politics and policy making consist of?
These questions are explored in a series of research projects, fellowships and seminar series detailed on these pages and in the publications listed separately.
They have developed from earlier research on prevention in health policy, AIDS politics, health sector reform, cross-national learning, mental health policy and the generation and mobilisation of knowledge in policy making.
Writing Politics
We need to talk about writing. Doing politics differently must mean writing politics differently, and 'writing politics' is a collective exploration of how that might work... Most of us work in policy, politics, sociology, law or IR, and we’re committed to teaching as...
Doing Politics
is now free to access at doingpolitics.space. I want to write about politics as something people do, to describe a politics grounded in human action and interaction – in the gathering and meeting, talking and writing of embodied and situated human beings…
The role of the councillor and the work of meeting
This paper picks up a theme from the recent literature on the councillor, that of time spent in meeting, and suggests that if we are to understand the role of the councillor we must understand the work the meeting does. The discussion is based in a series of...
What do policy makers really do?
The question is important because making policy engages a great number of people one way or another, and what they do they might do well or badly. Our standard answers are rather hazy, not least because policy making entails such great numbers of people doing a great...
Meeting, talk and text: policy and politics in practice
Our prevailing accounts of the policy process are challenged by studies of practice as well as by practitioners themselves. This paper sets out an alternative, grounded in politics and sociology and informed by recent work in related disciplines. Drawing on the...
Doing Politics: research, teaching and practice
For a meeting of the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, 19 November 2018... The aim of this presentation is simply to set out a framework for studying 'doing politics', and to discuss ways of using it in teaching as well as other kinds of...