Dr Ben Noble receives British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award

Congratulations to Dr Ben Noble, Lecturer in Russian Politics, who has been given a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award for 2019

Funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), British Academy Rising Star Engagement Awards (BARSEAs) are held for a 12-month period and provide funding of up to £15,000. They are designed to encourage wider engagement with the humanities and social sciences within and beyond academia through events, training, and mentoring activities.

Ben's work will examine why authoritarian leaders close down legislatures. In spite of the academic, policy, and public interest in examining this question, there is surprisingly little knowledge about moments of parliamentary shutdown. Dr Noble’s project will address this knowledge gap by creating a network of earlycareer researchers in political science studying legislative closures in non-democracies around the world; by holding a workshop to bring this network into dialogue with senior political scientists (mentors), non-political science area studies scholars, and country- and region-specific research analysts from the UK policy community; and by organising a public engagement event to disseminate initial research findings.

Further information on the awards can be found on the British Academy website.