Dave Richards

Politics Head of Department and Professor of Public Policy, University of Manchester
I joined the University of Manchester in 2012, appointed a Diamond Professor of Public Policy and have been Head of Department since July 2018.

I was awarded my PhD from the Department of Government, University of Strathclyde (1996). The thesis examined the politicisation of the Civil Service under the 1979-97 Conservative Government. I then became a post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham (1995-1998). In 1998 I joined the School of Politics and Communication Studies, University of Liverpool as a Lecturer, becoming a Senior Lecturer in 2001, Reader in 2004 and Professor in 2009. In the year 2000, I was a Visiting Honorary Fellow at the Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney, Australia. In 2008, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. I joined the University of Manchester in September 2012 as Professor of Public Policy.

My main research interests are in British politics, democracy, public policy, governance and political biography. I am currently the P.I. for a Nuffield Foundation funded project 'Public Expenditure Planning and Control in Complex Times: A Study of Whitehall Departments’ Relationship to the Treasury (1993-Present)' with Diane Coyle [Cambridge], Martin Smith [York] and Sam Warner [Manchester]. The project examines whether effective financial control is constrained by an approach emphasising centralised, Treasury control, but without a proper understanding of how money is spent and managed throughout complex policy chains for the period since 1993.

I am also the P.I. for an ESRC funded project Westminster's Dilemma in a Post-Brexit World: Reconciling a `New Politics' with the Westminster Model with Patrick Diamond [QMU, London] and Alan Wager [UCL] examining the rise of anti-politics in the UK, demands for new ways of doing politics and considers why, in the shadow of Brexit reform has has been limited.

Previous areas of research have included the changing role of the state through a critique of the literatures on governance, democracy and accountability, the regulatory state and implementation; leaks and whistle blowing in government; a multi-theoretical study on diffuse water pollution; UK institutions and crisis in the 21st century; and finally the role of political biography in political analysis.