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-
Recent Work
Why Politics Fails
Published by Penguin Random House (2023), translated into German, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese.
Learn MoreBBC Reith Lectures 2023
Delivered the prestigious annual BBC Reith Lectures exploring democracy and political institutions.
Listen on BBCPolitical Calculus
Substack newsletter analysing politics through data and political economy.
Read on SubstackContact
Nuffield College
University of Oxford
New Road, OX1 1NF
Oxford, England
Email: ben.ansell@politics.ox.ac.uk
Phone: +44 1865 278610