Dr
Nick
Dickinson
(he/him)
BA, MSt. (Oxford), MRes, PhD (Exeter)
School of Education
University Teacher
Full contact details
School of Education
The Wave
- Profile
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Nick Dickinson is a University Teacher in the School of Education at the University of Sheffield, where he teaches social science research methods and contributes to the School's programmes in PPE, Social Sciences and Social Research.
Before joining Sheffield, Nick was Lecturer in Quantitative Methods (Politics) at the University of Exeter's Centre for Computational Social Science. There he taught on the compulsory first-year modules 'Introduction to Social Data' and 'Analysis of Social Data', taking students with no previous experience of code or statistics through to confident analysis in R. From 2020 to 2024 he was Bingham Early Career Fellow in Constitutional Studies at Balliol College, Oxford, where he served as Course Director and Panel Chair for four undergraduate papers on British government and politics.
Nick holds a PhD in Political Science (2020) and an MRes in Politics (2016) from the University of Exeter, funded by an ESRC 1+3 Doctoral Studentship. He studied History and Politics (BA, 2013) and Modern British and European History (MSt, 2014) at the University of Oxford. He is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
- Research interests
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Nick's research examines the regulation of democratic politics, in particular parliamentary institutions, in comparative perspective, with a particular focus on parliaments. He combines quantitative and computational methods with qualitative historical and archival analysis.
His primary research explores how democracies decide what to pay their politicians, and what those decisions reveal about the kind of representation a society values. Drawing on historical parliamentary debates and cross-national data on legislatures around the world, his work examines how pay, expenses and outside earnings are set and regulated, and how the justification for paying politicians has changed over time.
He has also published on constitutional politics and parliamentary sovereignty, the socialisation of new MPs and party loyalty, and UK government and politics.
- Grants
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ESRC 1+3 Doctoral Studentship, South West Doctoral Training Partnership, University of Exeter (2015, grant number ES/J50015X/1)
Aspect Social Science Innovation Fellowship, University of Oxford (2022)
Best Paper in Legislative Studies, European Consortium for Political Research (awarded 2023 for a paper presented at the ECPR General Conference, August 2022)
College Scholarship for Exam Performance, Corpus Christi College, Oxford (2011)
- Teaching interests
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Nick's teaching covers data management, statistical inference, regression and visualisation in R and RStudio. He also has experience in teaching students to use large language models critically as part of a wider commitment to responsible data literacy.
He has designed numerous modules from scratch, including 'Comparative Electoral Systems', 'Introduction to Comparative Politics' and 'Developments in British Politics: from Baldwin to Brexit'. At Oxford he served as Course Director and Panel Chair for 'British Government and Politics since 1900', 'Modern British Government and Politics', 'Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Politics' and 'The Government and Politics of the UK', and taught graduate students on the Comparative Government paper. Earlier in his career he taught public policy and world politics seminars at Exeter, and delivered university-style tutorials in under-represented schools with The Brilliant Club.
Nick has supervised undergraduate dissertations at Oxford and Exeter, including quantitative projects, and ran Dissertation Skills seminars for MPhil and MSc students. He welcomes supervision of quantitative and mixed-methods projects, particularly on parliaments, political regulation, constitutional politics, British politics and political behaviour.
- Professional activities and memberships
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Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2019)
Political Studies Association: Convenor of the Public Policy and Administration Specialist Group (2020 to 2024); member of the Early Career Network Executive Committee (2018 to 2020)
Member of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy's Anti-Corruption Reference Group (since 2019), contributing to a new anti-corruption framework for WFD programmes
Speaker, IPSA Citizens' Forum on MPs' Pay and Funding (2025), in partnership with the New Citizen Project for the 'What's Democracy Worth?' report
Presenter, International Parliamentary Regulators Conference, London (2019), a practitioner gathering hosted by IPSA with participants from 13 countries
Research contributor to the Committee on Standards in Public Life report 'MPs' Outside Interests' (2018)
Creator and host of 'Efficient Secrets', a public podcast of the Oxford Constitutional Studies Forum (2022 to 2023)
Peer reviewer for Parliamentary Affairs, Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of Legislative Studies and Public Policy and Administration
Regular contributor to The Conversation, The Hill, the LSE British Politics and Policy blog and the PSA Parliaments blog