Nic Cheeseman

He served as the director of Oxford's African Studies Centre, before moving to the University of Birmingham in January 2017 to become the professor of democracy and international development.

[3] Cheeseman's work initially focused on African politics, including his 2015 monograph Democracy in Africa.

[4] Further books followed, including 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.

[7] Between 2013 and 2017, Cheeseman wrote a bi-weekly column for Kenya's Sunday Nation, covering topics such as elections, decentralization and corruption.

[19] Cheeseman's doctorate, The rise and fall of civil-authoritarianism in Africa: patronage, participation, and political parties in Kenya and Zambia,[20] 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.

[23] 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.