I am an Assistant Professor in Political Science and Programme Director of the BSc Computational Social Science at the University of Amsterdam.

I lead an international programme of computational social science research using large-scale longitudinal survey data to study political and institutional trust, public opinion and political behaviour.

My research focuses primarily on political and institutional trust, public opinion, and comparative politics. Much of my recent work compares the United Kingdom and Japan, examining how trust changes over time and how it relates to political behaviour, health, vaccination, artificial intelligence, academic freedom and other contemporary political and social issues.

I have a particular interest in combining substantive political questions with quantitative and computational methods, including survey research, longitudinal analysis, statistical modelling, geospatial methods, text and data analysis, and data scraping and wrangling.

From 2022 to 2025, I was co-Principal Investigator with Yosuke Sunahara of Kobe University on the UKRI (ESRC)/JSPS-funded TrustTracker project. The project used repeated surveys in the UK and Japan to understand how and why political and institutional trust changes. The international research collaboration and resulting research outputs continue beyond the funded project period, and can be found at TrustTracker.org.

Before joining the University of Amsterdam, I held positions at Brunel University London, Kobe University in Japan, the University of Essex and Lancaster University.

I was once described by The Times as a “political scientist with too much time on his hands”.

Current research projects

My current research focuses particularly on political and institutional trust, public opinion and comparative political behaviour.

I am Principal Investigator on Rebuilding Trust in Uncertain Times: Cross-National Conjoint Experiments and Collaborative Capacity Building, funded by an AISSR Impulse Grant. The project uses comparative survey experiments to examine the conditions under which political and institutional trust can be built or restored across several European countries, alongside continuing research collaboration with colleagues in Japan.

I am also Co-Investigator on the ESRC-funded project Investigating the individual and contextual roles of religion in British electoral politics, led by Ekaterina Kolpinskaya at the University of Exeter, together with Stuart Fox.

Other current research develops the UK–Japan survey infrastructure established through the TrustTracker project. This includes work on trust and populism, vaccination, public attitudes towards artificial intelligence, international conflict and academic freedom.

Research grants

• 2025–2027: AISSR Impulse Grant (€50,000), Rebuilding Trust in Uncertain Times: Cross-National Conjoint Experiments and Collaborative Capacity Building. Principal Investigator: Steve Pickering.

• 2025–2027: ESRC Research Grant (£202,244), Investigating individual and contextual role of religion in British electoral politics. Principal Investigator: Ekaterina Kolpinskaya (University of Exeter); Co-Investigators: Stuart Fox, Steve Pickering and Daniel Stevens.

• 2022–2025: UKRI (ESRC)/JSPS UK–Japan research grant (£419,000 + ¥30,000,000), Measuring trust and its variance during the COVID-19 pandemic using serial surveys and quantitative text analysis. Principal Investigators: Steve Pickering and Yosuke Sunahara (Kobe University).

• 2016: Brief Award (£11,000).

• 2013: Konosuke Matsushita Memorial Foundation (¥310,000).

• 2013: Japanese Association of Electoral Studies (¥200,000).

I am Programme Director of the BSc Computational Social Science at the University of Amsterdam.

Computational Social Science brings together social-scientific theory, programming, data and computational methods, and collaboration with external organisations to tackle complex societal problems. Rather than treating these as separate skills, the programme asks students to combine them: understanding a problem, working with stakeholders, collecting and analysing evidence, and developing solutions.

My own teaching reflects much the same philosophy. I am particularly interested in making quantitative and computational methods accessible, useful and, wherever possible, enjoyable.

Awards

• 2021: UBS Student-led Award
• 2019: Brunel University London Award for Excellence
• 2010: Politics and International Relations Teaching Award, Lancaster University
• 2009: Cedric Smith Prize for Peace or Conflict Research, Conflict Research Society