Nic Cheeseman

Nic Cheeseman is a political scientist and Professor of Democracy at the University of Birmingham. He is the founder and editor of the Democracy in Africa project, a leading website with news, analysis, interviews and data on African politics. He had previously been the Director of the Center for African Studies at Oxford University. He is a regular columnist for the Mail & Guardian and The African Report magazine, and collaborates with various media outlets. His lines of research revolve around democracy, elections and development, and has conducted research in various African countries such as Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. He is the author or publisher of a dozen books, including Democracy in Africa (2015), How to Rig an Election (2018), Authoritarian Africa (2020), The Moral Economy of Elections in Africa (2020) and Handbook of Kenyan Politics (2020). He was editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopaedia of African Politics and in 2019 received the Joni Lovenduski Award from the UK Political Studies Association. He is currently working on a research project on the history and impact of African political thought.