Richard Johnson

Richard Johnson’s work spans US and British politics and history. His US politics work analyses racial and ethnic politics, elections and voting behaviour, political institutions and policymaking, federalism, and the US Constitution. His British politics scholarship focuses on Labour Party history, Euroscepticism, and the British constitution. Across both domains, his interests lie in elections, inequality, policymaking, sovereignty, and constitutions.

Richard Johnson was appointed to Queen Mary University of London in 2020. Previously, he had been a Lecturer in US Politics at Lancaster University. He was educated at Cambridge (BA in Social and Political Sciences) and Oxford (MPhil in Comparative Government, DPhil in Politics). He has taught courses on US, UK, and comparative politics to university students at Queen Mary, Lancaster, Oxford, Cambridge, the University of Virginia, and Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Richard is the (co-)author of several books on British and US politics, including 'Canaraderie: One Hundred Years of the Cambridge LabourParty, 1912-2012', 'The End of the Second Reconstruction: Obama, Trump, and the Crisis of Civil Rights', 'US Foreign Policy: Domestic Roots and International Impact', and 'Keeping the Red Flag Flying: The Labour Party in Opposition since 1922'. He has edited two collections on the British constitution: 'Sceptical Perspectives on the Changing Constitution of the United Kingdom' and 'Strengthening the Political Constitution'. He has published nearly 40 academic articles and chapters in books on a wide range of topics.

Richard is co-host (with Lee Evans) of ‘Since Attlee and Churchill’, a podcast about British contemporary politics and British history since the Second World War.