Contact:
Professor Sara B Hobolt
Head of Department & Sutherland Chair in European Institutions
Department of Government
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street,
London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom
s.b.hobolt@lse.ac.uk

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Sara B. Hobolt holds the Sutherland Chair in European Institutions and is the Head of the  Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Previously, she held posts at the University of Oxford, the University of Michigan and the University of Zurich (Guest Professor). Sara received her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2005. In 2017, she was elected Fellow of the British Academy as its youngest member. In 2025, she was appointed as an Honorary Professor of the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University.

Her research and teaching interests lie in political behaviour, public opinion and the EU, and comparative politics. She has published six books and over 70 journal articles, including in the American Political Science Review, Annual Review of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, International Organization and Journal of Politics. Her forthcoming book Tribal Politics. How Brexit Divided Britain (Oxford University Press, with James Tilley) will be published in 2026, marking the 10-year anniversary of the Brexit referendum.

Sara is the current President of the European Political Science Society (EPSS) and the Chair of the European Election Studies (EES), a Europe-wide project studying voters, parties, candidates and the media in European Parliamentary elections.

She has been awarded several prizes for her research, including the APSA Best Paper Prize (2019, EPOVB) and Best Article Prize (2018, European Politics and Society) and the European Union Studies Association (EUSA) Best Book Prize for Europe in Question: Referendums on European Integration (Oxford University Press, 2009). In 2011, she was given the APSA Emerging Scholar Award for her contribution to the field of elections, public opinion and voting behaviour and in 2012 she was awarded the Nils Klim Prize for her outstanding contribution in the academic fields of the arts and humanities or social sciences.

Sara regularly provides commentary in the media on elections, Brexit, public opinion and European and EU politics, and she was the election expert for the BBC and Sky News on the past three European Parliament election nights. She also advises governments, parliaments and non-governmental organizations on matters relating to democracy, elections, referendums and public opinion.