School of Social & Political Sciences

Congratulations to our Politics and Research Methods Professor, Anja Neundorf, who has won a €2million grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for her global study on 'Democracy under threat: How education can save it'. 

The ERC Consolidator Grant competition was open to candidates from across the world but the grant holders need to be based in a public or private research organisation located in one of the EU Member States or Associated Countries. 

Anja's promise is to 'save democracy' and her research aims to find solutions to the causes of democratic backsliding, and to building new educational programmes using social media to create more resilient democratic societies. Her grant will fund a five year project, which will begin in Spring 2020, and Anja would love to see Glasgow, and the School of Social and Political Sciences, become a Hub for Democracy. 

On winning the grant Anja said 'The project will help to substantiate my passion by becoming a world-leading expert and pioneer on online democracy promotion. My research is a global study and will look at how to strengthen democracy and test the potential power of social media in this process -  how it motivates people and how they participate in the political process.'

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First published: 12 December 2019