Dr Elizabeth Simon

Profile

Elizabeth is an expert in British politics (including the politics of London), political behaviour (particularly political socialisation) and quantitative methods. She joined Queen Mary in 2022, after completing her PhD at the University of Southampton. She leads the Mile End Institute’s signature research project, Polling London.

Her research has been cited in the Financial Times, The Guardian, and the Times Higher Education Supplement and is currently focused on three key areas:

• Exploring how key life events and experiences (including studying at university, becoming a homeowner and the process of aging itself) shape public opinion and electoral behaviour in Britain.
• Identifying the formation of new social, political and place-based identities in Britain, and considering how these shape the political landscape via generating in- and out-group biases and antagonisms, affecting representation, impacting social cohesion and the functioning of democracy.
• Studying the politics and political landscape of London, and how and why this has changed over time.

Her publications include:

• ‘Demystifying the link between higher education and liberal values: A within‐sibship analysis of British individuals’ attitudes from 1994–2020’ – which was one of the most downloaded papers in the British Journal of Sociology, in its first 12 months of publication.

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  ‘Red Wall: The Definitive Description’ – with James Kanagasooriam, which has ~15,000 views and downloads, and has the highest ‘attention score’ of all Political Insight pieces, according to Altmetric.

You can read a full list of Elizabeth’s publications on her Google Scholar profile.

Research