Dr Laurence Cooley

Dr Laurence Cooley

Department of Political Science and International Studies
Associate Professor in Comparative Politics

Contact details

Address
Department of Political Science and International Studies
Muirhead Tower
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Laurence Cooley is a political scientist whose research investigates the relationship between social identities and political institutions, with a focus on power-sharing institutions and the politics of the census in deeply divided societies. Between 2017 and 2019, Laurence was an ESRC Future Research Leader. He is currently Associate Professor in Comparative Politics in the Department of Political Science and International Studies.

Feedback and office hours

Current students, please see Canvas for details of office hours

Qualifications

  • PhD Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, 2013
  • MA Political Science (Research Methods), University of Birmingham, 2008
  • MA Politics, Queen's University Belfast, 2006
  • BSc Economics and Politics, Bath, 2004
  • Associate, Higher Education Academy

Biography

Laurence Cooley is a political scientist whose research investigates the relationship between social identities and political institutions, with a focus on power-sharing institutions and the politics of the census in deeply divided societies.

The first person in his family to attend university, Laurence studied at the University of Bath and Queen's University Belfast. He came to the University of Birmingham in 2007 to start an ESRC-funded MA and PhD. His PhD on the EU's approach to conflict resolution in the Western Balkans was supervised by Thomas Diez, Michelle Pace and Tim Haughton. During his PhD, Laurence spent time as a visiting student at both the Centre for EU Studies at Ghent University and the Penn Program in Ethnic Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania.

In 2013, Laurence was appointed as a Teaching Fellow in IDD, following a period as a visiting lecturer in POLSIS and CREES and as part-time Impact and Outreach Assistant for the GSDRC. Between February 2017 and January 2019, he was a Research Fellow funded by the ESRC Future Research Leaders scheme, working on a project about the relationship between power sharing and the politics of the census in deeply divided societies. Linked to this project, he was also a Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Natural and Built Environment at Queen's University Belfast between June 2017 and January 2020.

Laurence rejoined POLSIS as Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in Comparative Politics in September 2021 and was promoted to Associate Professor in August 2024. He has been a member of the board of Research Committee 14, 'Politics and Ethnicity' of the International Political Science Association since July 2021 and vice-chair of that RC since July 2023.

Laurence's work has been quoted in the UK House of Commons and he recently gave evidence to Parliament's Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, on the implications of the 2021 census results.

Teaching

  • Research Design (second-year undergraduate)
  • Conflict and Peace in Deeply Divided Societies (final-year undergraduate)

Research

Laurence's core research interest is in the relationship between social identities and political institutions. His PhD research, which was undertaken in Birmingham's Department of Political Science and International Studies, explored the EU's approach to conflict resolution in the Western Balkans, and sought to explain the apparent preference of EU actors for consociational power-sharing mechanisms of managing conflict in deeply divided societies. The main outcome of this research was his first monograph, published as part of the Routledge Studies in European Foreign Policy series in 2019.

From February 2017 to January 2019, Laurence worked on a postdoctoral project, funded by the ESRC Future Research Leaders scheme, which investigated the relationship between census politics and the design of power-sharing institutions, with a particular empirical focus on Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kenya, Lebanon and Northern Ireland. He is currently working on completing the last outputs from this project and from a further stream of research, funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant, into the politics of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) data collection through national censuses.

He has recently started working on a new area of research, into how power-sharing shapes political responses to environmental crises in Northern Ireland, supported by a Birmingham Institute for Sustainability and Climate Action (BISCA) Sustainability Summer Internship.

Other activities

Member of:

  • Association for the Study of Nationalities
  • International Political Science Association (Research Committee 14: Politics and Ethnicity)
  • Political Studies Association (Ethnopolitics Specialist Group)
  • European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group on South East Europe

Professional appointments:

  • Board member (since July 2021) and vice-chair (since July 2023), International Political Science Association Research Committee 14: Politics and Ethnicity

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Cooley, L 2018, The European Union's Approach to Conflict Resolution: Transformation or Regulation in the Western Balkans? Routledge Studies in European Foreign Policy, Routledge, London.

Article

Cooley, L 2024, '‘No status – no census!’ The causes and consequences of the 1971 and 1981 Northern Ireland census boycotts', Contemporary British History. https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2024.2387584

Cooley, L 2022, '"It will do no more than annoy the Protestants": the 1991 Northern Ireland census and the Irish language', Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 269-289. https://doi.org/10.1080/13537113.2022.2052594

Balaton-Chrimes, S & Cooley, L 2022, 'To count or not to count? Insights from Kenya for global debates about enumerating ethnicity in national censuses', Ethnicities, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 404-424. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687968211056379

Cooley, L 2021, 'Census politics in Northern Ireland from the Good Friday Agreement to Brexit: beyond the ‘sectarian headcount’?', British Journal of Politics and International Relations, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 451-470. https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148120959045

Cooley, L 2020, 'Consociationalism and the politics of the census in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Northern Ireland', Political Geography, vol. 82, 102248. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102248

Cooley, L 2020, 'Sexual orientation and the 2021 UK census', European Journal of Politics & Gender, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 445-447. https://doi.org/10.1332/251510820X15845548424385

Cooley, L 2019, 'The contentious politics of the census in consociational democracies, ESRC', Impact, vol. 2019, no. 1, pp. 23-25. https://doi.org/10.21820/23987073.2019.1.23

Cooley, L 2019, 'To be a Bosniak or to be a citizen? Bosnia and Herzegovina’s 2013 census as an election', Nations and Nationalism, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 1065-1086. https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12500

Cooley, L & Mujanović, J 2016, 'Population Politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Reply to Bochsler and Schläpfer', Ethnopolitics, vol. 15, no. 5, pp. 487-492. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449057.2016.1190159

Cooley, L & Mujanović, J 2015, 'Changing the rules of the game: comparing FIFA/UEFA and EU attempts to promote reform of power-sharing institutions in Bosnia-Herzegovina', Global Society, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 42-63. https://doi.org/10.1080/13600826.2014.974512

Chapter

Cooley, L 2018, The governance of sport in deeply divided societies: Actors and institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus and Northern Ireland . in JS Rofe (ed.), Sport and Diplomacy: Games within games. Key Studies in Diplomacy, Manchester University Press, Manchester, pp. 13-33. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526131065.00010

Entry for encyclopedia/dictionary

Cooley, L 2020, Census politics in deeply divided societies. in O Richmond & G Visoka (eds), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11795-5_19-2

Cooley, L & Brentin, D 2016, Nationalism and sport. in ET Woods & R Schertzer (eds), The State of Nationalism. National movements and Intermediary Structures in Europe. <https://stateofnationalism.eu/article/nationalism-and-sport/>

Other contribution

Cooley, L 2019, Census politics in deeply divided societies. University of Birmingham. <http://epapers.bham.ac.uk/3276/>

View all publications in research portal