World-leading Research

Our research looks at big and broad-ranging topics and answers important questions through rigorous analysis and strong theoretical approaches.

With access to expertise in a wide range of quantitative and qualitative methods, our people apply their academic and methodological skill to help us understand the political worlds of today—and shape those of the future.

Funding opportunities

Research Excellence

REF

DPIR achieved excellent scores in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021, confirming the excellence of our research. The proportion of Oxford’s research outputs judged to be world-leading has also risen significantly since the last REF exercise in 2014.

Pluralism

DPIR's diverse community bridges International Relations, Comparative Politics, and Political Theory. It creates a rich intellectual environment for interdisciplinary engagement.

Global Expertise

Our research community holds in-depth, area-specific expertise in the politics of Europe, Russia and the Former Soviet Union, the US, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

A nexus for big questions and big ideas. We develop innovative new ways for gathering, processing and analysing data; we create new theoretical frameworks; and our research projects tackle some of the most-pressing challenges around the globe.

Research Networks

OxPo network

Programme for Global Leadership

Centre for Democratic Resilience

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Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

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Oxford Computational Political Science Group

Fawcett, L. (2026) “The Middle East amid the changing global politics of regionalism”, in P. De Lombaerde, A. Acharya, and B. Furtak-Cambell (eds.) Essays on Global Regionalism. Springer.

Miller, D. (2025) “Nationalism”. {Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University}.

Hussein, H. (2025) “Fueling sovereignty: colonial oil and the creation of unlikely states. By Naosuke Mukoyama, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. 228p”, Perspectives on Politics [Preprint].

Available at https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592725000957

Miller, D. (2025) “Raymond Plant and Market Socialism”, in M. Beech and K. Hickson (eds.) The Idea of the Good Society Essays in Honour of Raymond Plant. Oxford University Press.

Hochmüller, M. and Idler, A. (2025) “Porous borders and the emergence of hybrid sovereignties”, Territory Politics Governance, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–20.

Available at https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2025.2488934

Howlett, M. and Dvornichenko, D. (2025) “Losing and finding home twice: Ukrainian women’s experiences of secondary internal displacement”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies [Preprint].

Available at https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2025.2499712

Nejjar, S. and Ketchley, N. (2025) “MENA Historic Shapefiles”, Center for Open Science.

Available at https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/nfeh4_v2

Eijking, J. (2025) “The Micro-politics of International Commissions”, in Ways of Seeing International Organisations. Cambridge University Press (CUP), pp. 186–207.

Available at https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009552646.015

Kelly, E., Tilley, J. and Oskarsson, S. (2025) “Revisiting the link between political trust and political participation”, Journal of Politics [Preprint].

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