Ben W. Ansell

Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College and the University of Oxford and Fellow of the British Academy.

Host of BBC Radio 4's Rethink, 2023 BBC Reith Lecturer, and author of Why Politics Fails.

Current Roles

Inaugural Director, Centre for Advanced Social Science Methods (CASSM), University of Oxford, 2025-30
Host, BBC Radio 4 Rethink, 2024-
UK Politics Columnist, Prospect, 2025-
Editor (with David Samuels and Dawn Teele), Comparative Political Studies
Fellow of the British Academy, 2018-

Published by Penguin Random House (2023), translated into German, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese.

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Delivered the prestigious annual BBC Reith Lectures exploring democracy and political institutions.

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Substack newsletter analysing politics through data and political economy.

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Nuffield College
University of Oxford
New Road, OX1 1NF
Oxford, England

Phone: +44 1865 278610