Professor Michael Kenny is the inaugural Head of the Bennett School of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, having been head of the Bennett Institute of Public Policy. Before he arrived in Cambridge, Michael held positions at: Queen’s University, Belfast; the University of Sheffield, where he was appointed Head of the Department of Politics; and Queen Mary University of London, where he was the inaugural Director of the Mile End Institute. He leads the “Place and Public Policy” research programme at the Bennett School.
Previously, he has served on the Leverhulme Trust’s Advisory Committee, was co-director of the British Academy’s “Governing England” programme, and was appointed Visiting Fellow at the UCL Constitution Unit. In 2021 he was made a Fellow of the UK’s Academy of the Social Sciences. As well as being a Professor of Public Policy at Cambridge, he is a Professorial Fellow at Fitzwilliam College and sits on the Management Boards of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, the Battcock Institute and the Centre for Science and Policy – all at Cambridge University.
He has provided advice, training and consultancy to central and local governments in the UK, and internationally.
Research interests
Public policy; governance and devolution; infrastructure and place-based policy-making; territorial politics and the urban-rural divide; British politics and political ideas.
Teaching
Michael teaches on the M.Phil in Public Policy.
Key publications
Books
- (With N.Pearce) World Island; the Maritime Idea in British Politics (Polity, 2027).
- Fractured Union: Politics, Sovereignty and the Fight to Save the UK (Hurst Publishers, 2024).
- (With I. McLean and A.Paun (eds)) Governing England (Proceedings of the British Academy, 2018).
- (With N. Pearce) Shadows of Empire: the Anglosphere in British Politics (Polity, 2018).
- The Politics of English Nationhood (Oxford University Press, 2014); winner of the UK Political Studies Association’s ‘Mackenzie’ prize for best book in political studies.
- (With M. Flinders, A.Gamble, and C.Hay) eds., The Oxford Handbook of British Politics (Oxford University Press, 2009).
- The Politics of Identity: Liberal Political Theory and the Dilemmas of ‘Difference’ (Polity Press, 2004).
- (With R. English) Rethinking British Decline (Macmillan, 1999).
- The First New Left in Britain, 1956-64: British Intellectuals after Stalin (Lawrence and Wishart, 1995).
Articles
- (With D. Coyle) ‘How to get science back into policy-making’. Nature, 2025: How to get science back into policymaking
- (With D. Luca) ‘Drifting further apart? The trend in urban-rural polarisation in political attitudes across Europe should not be overstated’. Political Geography, 2024: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629824001306
- (With D. Luca) ‘The urban-rural polarisation of political disenchantment: an investigation of social and political attitudes in 30 European countries’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, early view, July 2021: https://academic.oup.com/cjres/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/cjres/rsab012/6322445
- ‘Governance, politics and political economy – England’s questions after Brexit’. Territory, Politics, Governance, 10(5), pp678-95; Full article: Governance, politics and political economy – England’s questions after Brexit (tandfonline.com)
- (With J. Sheldon) “‘A place apart’, or integral to ‘our precious Union’? Understanding the nature and implications of Conservative Party thinking about Northern Ireland, 2010–19”, Irish Political Studies, 2020: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07907184.2020.1847418
- (With L. Aqui and N. Pearce) ‘“The Empire of England”: Enoch Powell, Sovereignty and the Constitution of the Nation’, Twentieth Century British History, early view, July 2020: https://academic.oup.com/tcbh/article-abstract/doi/10.1093/tcbh/hwaa022/5864477?redirectedFrom=fulltext
- (With J. Sheldon) ‘When Planets Collide: the British Conservative Party and the Discordant Goals of Delivering Brexit and Preserving the Domestic Union, 2016–2019’, Political Studies, early view, June 2020: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0032321720930986
- (With J.P. Reynolds, M. Archer, S. Piling, G.J. Hollands, and T.M. Marteau) ‘Public Acceptability of Nudging and Taxing to Reduce Consumption of Alcohol, Tobacco and Food: a Population-based Survey Experiment’, Social Science and Medicine, 236, 2019.
- (With D. Gover) ‘Answering the West Lothian Question? A Critical Assessment of ‘English Votes for English Laws’ in the UK Parliament, Parliamentary Affairs, 71, 4, 2018, pp. 760-82.
- ‘Back to the Populist Future?; Nostalgia in Contemporary Ideological Discourse’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 22, 3, 2017, pp. 256-73.
- ‘The Politicisation of Englishness: towards a framework for political analysis’, Political Studies Review, 14, 2016, pp. 325-34.
- ‘The Return of Englishness in British Political Culture’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 53, 1, 2014, pp. 35-51.
- ‘A Traditional English (Not British) Country Gentleman of the Radical Left’; Understanding the Making and Unmaking of Edward Thompson’s English Idiom’, Contemporary British History, 28, 4 (14), 2014, pp 494-516
- ‘Englishness Politicised?; unpicking the normative implications of the McKay Commission’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 17, 2015 pp. 152-70.
- ‘History and Dissent: Bernard Crick’s The American Science of Politics’, American Political Science Review, 100, 4, 2006, pp 547-53.
- ‘Isaiah Berlin’s Contribution to Modern Political Theory’, Political Studies, 48, 5, 2000, pp 1026-39.
- ‘Politics as an Academic Vocation’, in M. Flinders, A. Gamble, C. Hay and M. Kenny, eds., The Oxford Handbook of British Politics (Oxford University).
