Gemma Loomes

Since 2016, I have been employed at Keele University, firstly as a Teaching Fellow and now as a Lecturer 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.

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).