Marta Cantijoch Cunill

Marta Cantijoch holds a PhD in Political Science from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (2013). She joined the Department of Politics at The University of Manchester as a Lecturer in 2014. She is currently the Politics Director of Undergraduate Studies and has been convenor of the "Democracy & Elections" Research Cluster. Marta has developed an extensive portfolio of research in the fields of political participation and political communication, with a focus on the effects of digital media. She is particularly interested in understanding how citizens use the internet to engage in politics and develop their citizenship skills. In her analyses, she uses innovative forms of data, including linked survey and digital trace data or survey experiments, as well as mixed-methods designs combining survey data and qualitative focus groups or diaries. Her work has been published in top tier journals, including The Journal of Politics, Political Communication or The British Journal of Politics and International Relations. She is also the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Elections, Voting Behaviour and Public Opinion (2018).

• Political Participation
• Elections and electoral behaviour
• Electoral campaigns
• Political communication
• Digital Politics
• Digital media and social media

Courses taught:

POLI10100 – Study Skills (UGT 1) 
POLI10302 – Making Sense of Politics (UGT 1) 
POLI3101 – Understanding Political Choice in Britain (UGT 3) 
UG and PGT supervision

PhD students:

Completed:

2014 - Cheryl Anderson: "Does the web create a pathway to political engagement for young people?" 
2021 - Niklas Loynes: "Public opinion without polls: the case for twitter as a source for electoral forecasts".    
2022 - Jack Bailey: "Voter Preferences and the Changing Dimensions and Dynamics of Economic Wellbeing in the 21st century"
2023: James Griffiths: "Why, and when, does national identity become important to elections?"

On-going:

Peninah Wangari-Jones - "How does coloniality shape black activism?"
Oliver Beatson - "Evaluating the merits of Survey and Observational Data in National Election Studies"
Cressida Arkwright - "Youth engagement in young democracies. Assessing the patterns and drivers of youth engagement in Ukraine".
Sarah Ledoux - "Are elected legislators responsive to citizen policy demands expressed in social media? A comparative analysis of Latin American democracies"
Niamh Cashell - "Visual social media use in election campaigns."