Gemma Loomes

Biography

Since 2016, I have been employed as a Teaching Fellow in Comparative Politics. I first came to Keele in 2000 as an undergraduate student and have since completed all my degrees at Keele; a BA(Hons) in International Politics and Politics, an M(Res) in Political Parties and Elections and obtained my PhD in 2008. A modified version of my doctoral thesis, Party Strategies in Western Europe: Party Competition and Electoral Outcomes, was published as a monograph by Routledge in 2011. Since 2008, I have held various teaching and research positions at a wide range of universities, including Sussex, Warwick, Leicester, Loughborough and Birmingham. My main research interests lie within the field of political parties, with a particular focus on the origins and development of the party systems of Western Europe.

Research and scholarship

My research focuses on the party systems in western European, with a specific focus on the strategies that parties adopt, both in relation to other parties and also in relation to institutions.    More broadly, my research interests include political parties and democracy, electoral systems and institutional engineering. My current research interests focus on the relationship within party systems between traditional political parties and anti-establishment parties across Western Europe. I am also a member of the Keele European Parties Research Unit (KEPRU).

Teaching

Module convenor for:

• PIR-10069 Making Sense of Politics
• SSC-10001 Becoming a Social Scientist
• PIR-20089 Elections, Voters and Public
• PIR-20116 Global Democracy Under Threat?
• PIR-30150 Contemporary Democratic Theory
• PIR-30119 Extreme Right in Western Europe
• PIR-30130 Dissertation for Politics/International Relations
• PIR-40105 Dissertation for Politics/International Relations