My research contributes to the study of power in British politics, drawing on models of (multi-level) governance and theories of state management to explore the big distributional questions of public policy and political economy. I am particularly interested in how UK governing institutions operate in an increasingly complex and incoherent governance landscape and the extent to which this undermines the effectiveness of political and policy processes.

I am currently involved in two grant-funded research projects:

• I am part of a research team based at the ESRC-funded Productivity Institute, University of Manchester, exploring the 'UK Productivity-Governance Puzzle'. This project asks whether successive governments have been constrained in attempts to address regional disparities and stagnant productivity growth by the UK’s centralised but fragmented institutional landscape.
• I currently working on a co-authored book (with David Richards, Diane Coyle and Martin J. Smith) exploring the politics of public expenditure control, drawing on my time as a Research Associate on the Nuffield Foundation funded project ‘Public Expenditure Planning and Control in Complex Times‘ (2020 – 2023). The book explores the adaptability and effectiveness of HM Treasury’s approach to public expenditure planning and control in the context of an increasingly complex and fragmented governance landscape. The book is under contract with Oxford University Press.

I am also interested in the application of political science perspectives in political history. In April 2023, my first monograph, Who Governs Britain? Trade Unions, the Conservative Party and the Failure of the Industrial Relations Act 1971, was published by Manchester University Press. The book provides a novel account of this Act’s failure as an attempt to depoliticise and regulate trade union activities, bringing the analysis up to date by tracing policy learning in industrial relations from the 1970s to the present. The book was recently reviewed in Contemporary British History.

I have published widely on these and related themes in leading academic and non-academic outlets and regularly engage with policy communities. I am Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal British Politics.