Nic Cheeseman is a British political scientist and professor of democracy at the University of Birmingham. His research focuses on democracy, elections and African politics. He is a columnist for The Africa Report and South Africa's Mail & Guardian, and is the editor of the website Democracy in Africa.
Cheeseman studied politics, philosophy and economics at the University of Oxford, where he also completed an MPhil and DPhil in politics. He was elected as a Cox Fellow at New College, and in 2006 held a position at Jesus College, Oxford, as an associate professor of African politics. During his time at Oxford, he served as Director of the African Studies Centre. In January 2017, he joined the University of Birmingham as Professor of Democracy and International Development. In 2022, he became the inaugural Director of the University's centre of Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation.
Cheeseman has held a number of visiting academic positions, including at Sciences Po, the University of Cape Town, and the Australian National University. His early research focused on African politics, including his 2015 monograph Democracy in Africa. He has also published work on democracy and elections in a comparative context, including Coalitional Presidentialism in Comparative Perspective with Paul Chaisty and Tim Power, and How to Rig an Election with Brian Klaas.
Subsequent publications include Authoritarian Africa: Repression, Resistance and the Power of Ideas, with Jonathan Fisher in 2019, and The Moral Economy of Elections: Democracy, Voting, and Virtue, with Gabrielle Lynch and Justin Willis in 2020. In 2022, Cheeseman established a research project on the history of African political thought and co-founded a research network focused on ideas and ideologies in African politics.
He served as co-editor African Affairs from 2012 and 2016. In 2016, he was appointed founding editor-in-chief of Oxford University PressâÂÂs Oxford Encyclopaedia of African Politics, and he was also involved in editing a book series on African politics and international relations.
Between 2013 and 2017, Cheeseman wrote a bi-weekly column for KenyaâÂÂs Sunday Nation, covering topics including elections, decentralization and corruption. In 2017, he resigned from the newspaper along with several colleagues, citing concerns about government censorship. Since then he has written a regular column for the Africa Report, runs a collaboration with The Continent, the Pan-African Magazine, and regularly writes for South Africa's Mail & Guardian newspaper. He also regularly writes for The Economist, Le Monde, Financial Times, Newsweek, the Washington Post, New York Times, and the BBC.
In 2020, Cheeseman was part of a group that founded the Resistance Bureau, an international webinar series focused on issues related to political freedom and governance. He also co-edits the website Democracy in Africa, which publishes analysis on African politics for a range of audiences.
CheesemanâÂÂs doctoral thesis, The rise and fall of civil-authoritarianism in Africa: patronage, participation, and political parties in Kenya and Zambia, was awarded the Arthur McDougall Dissertation Prize by the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom for the Best Dissertation on Elections, Electoral Systems or Representation in 2008.
In 2013, an article co-authored with Paul Chaisty and Timothy Power, titled âÂÂRethinking the âÂÂpresidentialism debateâÂÂ: Conceptualizing coalitional politics in cross-regional perspectiveâÂÂ, received the Comparative Area Studies (CAS) Award for best article in the field. His book How to Rig an Election was included in âÂÂbooks of the yearâ lists by Spectator and the Centre for Global Development.
In 2019, Cheeseman won the Joni Lovenduski Prize of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom for outstanding professional achievement by a mid-career scholar.
In 2019, Cheeseman was awarded the Joni Lovenduski Prize by the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom for mid-career professional achievement. In the same year, a research team he led received the ESRC Celebrating Impact Prize for Outstanding International Impact for work on elections and accountability in new democracies.
In 2022, How to Rig an Election was nominated for the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, and Cheeseman received the Josiah Mason Award for Academic Advancement from the University of Birmingham.
He has also served on advisory bodies, including as a member of the Advisory Board of the European Democracy Hub and the International Advisory Council of Afrobarometer.