The School of Geography, Politics and Sociology

Staff Profile

Dr Emily Clough

Senior Lecturer in Politics

Background

My research interests focuses on questions around environmental justice, particularly as it applies to cities.  Recently, I have been looking at this through the lens of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.  In addition to my peer-reviewed work, I have contributed to a number of consultancies with the Scottish government, the United Nations and the London Sustainable Development Commission.

My Google Scholar profile can be located here.

I am Degree Programme Director for the MA programmes in Politics.  If you have any questions about these programmes, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Research

Environmental Justice

I am currently working on a project with Professor Derek Bell about the environmental justice impacts of hydraculic fracturing (fracking).  Our first study, "Just Fracking: a distributive environmental justice analysis of unconventional gas" was recently published in Environmental Research Letters (2015 ISI: 4.5).  The next iteration of this project will look more closely at the role of political participation and regulation in affecting the placement of wells, and thus their environmental justice impact.


Strategic voting and Duverger's Law

My early research agenda used agent-based models to explore whether and how people would vote strategically without access to polling data.  


Teaching

I really enjoy teaching research methods to politics and social science students.  I believe that understanding numbers is essential to being able to properly engage with important political issues.  I motivate my students to think critically whenever they encounter statistics in the media or in political conversations

Undergraduate Teaching

POL2081: Research Methods in Politics

This module takes students from measurement through to linear regression.  Students use SPSS to explore the British Social Attitude Survey.

POL3103: Community Based Research in Politics

This module acts as a fulfilment of the research requirement for final year Politics students.  Instead of writing a dissertation, students engage in a year length research project with a community organisation.  This develops the research skills of the students while providing a valuable service to the organisation that is involved.  This module is part of the Social Justice NE initiative.

Postgraduate Teaching

POL8038: Doing Political Research

This research methods module gives students the primary research skills necessary to engage in independent research.   The focus of the module is usually on a standard set of quantitative methods, but there is considerable flexibility to account for student needs and interests.  As an assessment, students work in teams to produce a research paper; the goal is to have this paper to be publishable in quality.  Craig Johnson and Sunil Rodger's paper "Did Perceptions of the Economy Affect Attitudes to Immigration at the 2010 British General Election?", published in Social Science Quarterly, was first written for this module.

HSS8005: Introduction to Quantitative Methods

I work with my colleague Dr. Robin Humphrey to deliver this module.  I teach classes on statistical inference and sampling, and the advanced optional classes on multivariate techniques.

Publications