Dr Thom Oliver

Qualifications:

BA, MRes, PhD, FHEA

Position:

Senior Lecturer in Politics

Department:

HAS - Health and Social Sciences

Telephone:

+441173286051

Email:

Thom.Oliver@uwe.ac.uk

Social media:

About me

Dr Thom Oliver is a Senior Lecturer in Politics in the School of Social Sciences at UWE Bristol. He is a member of the Politics and International Relations programme leadership team, serving as Year 2 Lead and Alumni Lead. In these roles, he supports student belonging, employability, alumni engagement and the programme’s wider civic and professional relationships.

His research examines elections and voter reasoning, local democracy and political representation, urban leadership and governance reform. He has particular expertise in qualitative and comparative research, longitudinal election studies and the development and reuse of open research data.

Thom’s work has a strong public-facing, policy  and practitioner dimension. He regularly contributes evidence-led political analysis regularly to television, radio and online journalism, including BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, BBC regional and local radio, and ITV News. His commentary covers elections, political leadership, democratic trust, local and regional governance, and constitutional change.

He also undertakes invited policy engagement and consultation with government departments, public bodies and civil-society organisations. These have included the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and as an academic adviser for Citizens for Culture, which used the UK’s first regional Citizens’ Assembly for Culture to deliver the West of England’s Regional Cultural Plan.

A Media Impact Portfolio containing examples and recordings of his recent broadcast contributions is available to journalists and media organisations on request.

Thom holds a BA (Hons) in Politics from the University of Exeter, an MRes in European Social Policy from the University of Bath, and a PhD from the University of Birmingham. hist doctoral research examined public policy, local government, and the political role of elected councillors.

His recent research outputs include the following open-access datasets produced through the Qualitative Election Study of Britain:, published via the UK Data Service

Oliver, T., Carvalho, E., Winters, K. (2025). Qualitative Election Study of Britain 2024: Pre- and Post- Election Transcripts. [data collection]. UK Data Service. SN: 857874, DOI: 10.5255/UKDA-SN-857874

Winters, K., Carvalho, E., Oliver, T. (2025). Qualitative Election Study of Britain Party Leader Evaluations Database, 2005-2024. [data collection]. UK Data Service. SN: 857826, DOI: 10.5255/UKDA-SN-857826

Further details of Thom’s publications and research activity are available through his Google Scholar and ResearchGate profiles.

Area of expertise

Thom’s work on elections and voter reasoning is led through the Qualitative Election Study of Britain (QESB), for which he is Principal Investigator. Established in 2010, QESB is a longitudinal research programme examining how voters understand, discuss and make decisions during UK elections and referendums. It has generated qualitative evidence across five general elections, the Scottish independence referendum and the referendum on UK membership of the European Union, with support from the British Academy, the Carnegie Trust and the UK Data Service.

In 2024, Thom led the QESB General Election study, directing its research design, fieldwork, analysis and data documentation. The project captured in-depth reflections from voters across England, Scotland and Wales and produced an extensive open-access dataset for the UK elections research community. He has subsequently been invited to lead, as Principal Investigator, the qualitative components of the ESRC-funded Scottish and Welsh Election Studies, designing research into how voters interpret political leadership, constitutional change, party competition and democratic representation.

His expertise in urban leadership and governance reform is developed through the Bristol Civic Leadership Project, on which he is a Co-Investigator. This collaboration between UWE Bristol and the University of Bristol examines governance innovation, political leadership and democratic accountability in Bristol and the West of England. Supported by ESRC Impact Acceleration funding, the project has produced academic research, policy briefings and public-facing educational resources. Thom’s current work examines the consequences of institutional reform, including transitions between mayoral, committee and leader-and-cabinet models, regional devolution, and relationships between political institutions, civic leaders and local communities.

Thom also undertakes comparative research on councillors, mayors and local political leadership through the LocGov Research Network. He co-led the UK team for the 2024 Return of the Councillors survey, which gathered evidence from councillors across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on their representative roles, workloads, political priorities, accountability and experiences of abuse and intimidation. The research forms part of a wider European programme of coordinated surveys, shared datasets and comparative publications.

His work with the network has contributed to two chapters in the 2026 Palgrave volumes Municipal Councillors in Europe, drawing on a comparative dataset of more than 30,000 councillors across 28 countries. Current projects include the third European survey of mayors and comparative research into the professionalisation and politicisation of local government.

His methodological expertise focuses on the design and delivery of longitudinal qualitative research and the production, preservation and reuse of large qualitative datasets. This includes research on research-generated conversational data, qualitative data sharing, open research infrastructure and the responsible use of computational and AI-assisted methods to support, rather than replace, interpretive analysis.

Publications

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