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Centres, Institutes & Groups
Western’s Department of Political Science is home to a vibrant ecosystem of interdisciplinary research centres and collaborative groups that explore the political world from every angle — from behaviour and public opinion, to urban governance, transitional justice, digital society, and global engagement. Together, these centres bring faculty and students across Social Science and the wider university into shared spaces for innovative research, methodological advancement, and real‑world policy impact. They foster collaboration, support graduate training, connect scholars with practitioners and communities, and strengthen Western’s role as a leader in understanding how politics shapes — and is shaped by — people, institutions, and societies around the world.
Centre for the Study of Political Behaviour
The study of political behaviour is central to our understanding of participatory democracy. Political behaviour encompasses key aspects of democratic citizenship including participation in the political process, voting in elections, political parties and interest groups, and public opinion and attitudes towards political institutions, processes, policy and politicians. The mission of the Centre for the Study of Political Behaviour (CSPB) is to promote scholarship in all aspects of political behaviour through collaboration, external grant applications, discussion, and dissemination. The CSPB includes representation from the Departments of Political Science, Sociology, Psychology, and DAN Management & Organizational Studies, as well as members from other faculties and affiliate schools.
Centre for Computational and Quantitative Social Science
The Centre for Computational and Quantitative Social Science (CCQSS) builds on Western’s established research strengths in order to develop a national centre of research excellence the use and development of quantitative social science methodology. Faculty Associates will be drawn from a number of Academic Units with the Social Sciences – namely Geography, Political Science, Sociology, Psychology, and Economics. Founders of MapleMeth, a regional methodology conference with the goal of engaging quantitative scholars both within and beyond Canada.
Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance
Most Canadians now live in cities and large metropolitan areas. Social, economic, and environmental policymaking by all levels of government is increasingly urban in its focus. Western’s Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance was created in 2017 to respond to the many new challenges facing local governments and urban policymakers. Bringing together academic researchers and students from across Western and beyond, our goals are to facilitate new interdisciplinary collaborations on pressing questions, contribute to graduate training and professional development, and foster dialogue between academics, policy practitioners and the broader public. As Western’s hub for urban research, the Centre builds on the university’s established strengths including the graduate Local Government Program, the undergraduate Urban Development Program, and the work of dozens of faculty members and graduate students in academic units in Social Science and across campus.
Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-conflict Reconstruction
The Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction (TJ Centre) was established in late 2009. It brings together experts from across the Western community whose teaching and research focuses on issues including reconciliation, criminal accountability, post-colonial legacies, legal reconstruction, the environment, human rights, reparative justice, economic justice, healing circles, democratization, and more. Our aim is to be a world-wide centre of excellence in scholarship on transitional justice and post-conflict reconstruction through collaborative, interdisciplinary and international research amongst faculty, undergraduate, graduate, and professional students and postdoctoral fellows.
The Africa Institute
The Africa Institute was established to promote and facilitate impactful research done by researchers at Western in Africa following an interdisciplinary, context-specific, collaborative, and capacity building approach. Western University is home to nearly 100 faculty researchers and 100 graduate and postdoctoral researchers whose primary focus is Africa. The Africa Institute strives to cultivate reciprocal partnerships between Western and African researchers studying diverse topics, such as waste management, ecosystem health, health policy, gender studies, linguistics, refugee studies, and transitional justice. This is facilitated by a strong history of Western staff, faculty, and student involvement with the African continent, through volunteer programs and academic exchange programs. This ongoing association has developed a deep commitment at Western University to building sustainable relationships with Africans and African institutions, and a growing engagement with the most important issues affecting the continent. We are determined to collaborate constructively with the academic community, with institutions, and with governments and agencies working in diverse sectors throughout the African continent to create a preeminent institute of its kind in the world.
The Electro-Governance Group
Societies, harnessed with the power of new information and communication technologies, have crossed over into an electronic/digital frontier. It has become commonplace to talk about ‘big data’ as the defining feature of current and future global, digitally-networked societies. Today, not only are questions of public governance and accountability fundamentally connected to the governance of information, but more and more, societies are being managed and governed electronically and digitally by way of informational databases and processes. Every discipline and sector is affected by the increasing volume, velocity, variety and complexity of digital information, and currently, a preponderant amount of research is devoted to analyzing, mining, managing, and monetizing these exponentially growing networks of information. What remains underdeveloped and underfunded, we would argue, is research committed to critically questioning, challenging, and re-imagining the nature and scope of electronic/digital governance and its paradigm of ‘big data’. We welcome all on- and off-campus researchers interested in exploring these issues with us and encourage you to participate in The EGG's activities.
The Political Behaviour Research Group
The Political Behaviour Reasearch Group (PBRG) is a research-facilitating and learning environment for the study of political behavior and political communication. Through the Political Behaviour Reading Group, PBRG brings together faculty and students to discuss cutting-edge research on political attitudes, opinion formation, and behavior. Throughout the semester, the group hosts invited scholars who present works-in-progress and recent research. Meetings are held regularly and provide an opportunity for in-depth discussion, feedback, and scholarly exchange in an informal and collaborative setting.
The Body Politics Lab
The Body Politics Lab supports the work of the Canada Research Chair in Political Psychology and is funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, pursuing the following objectives: Compare physiological responses to political engagement to other risk-taking activities, with the intent to design better deliberative spaces; Explore how individuals respond in political and non-political conversations, and whether gender impacts the quality and content of discussion; Measure individual physiological responses when social spaces become political; and Identify how physical appearance impacts evaluations of political actors.