Dr Louise Luxton joined the Politics Department at the University of Manchester in August 2023 as postdoctoral Research Associate working with Dr Rosalind Shorrocks (UK Lead Investigator) on the Horizon Europe funded project UNTWIST: Policy Recommendations to Regain the "losers of feminism" as Mainstream Voters. The project is a collaboration between institutions in Spain, Germany, Hungary, Denmark, Switzerland, and the UK, and explores the ways in which right-wing populist actors may be acting as niche parties, twisting the needs of citizens at the margins in relation to sex and gender. It seeks to provide policy recommendations to empower mainstream parties to improve their representation of citizen’s gender-based needs and interests.

In her own research, Louise focuses on questions relating to gender, political communication and party politics in comparative perspective. She uses a range of quantitative and qualitative methods, primarily utilising computational text analysis techniques to analyse political actors' communication on gender-based issues. She also focuses on party issue competition and strategic issue communication in the European context, with a particular interest in the communication strategies of small parties.

She was awarded a PhD in Media, Culture and Heritage from Newcastle University in 2023. Her thesis utilised innovative text analysis techniques to investigate the issue concerns and communication strategies of European women's parties in election manifestos, news media, and social media.

Mixed-method text analysis; Text-as-data; Survey design; Focus groups and interviews