School of Social and Political Science

Background

Davide Vampa is a Senior Lecturer in Territorial Politics and Co-Director of the Centre on Constitutional Change. He is also Lead Editor of Regional & Federal Studies and Chair of the ECPR Standing Group on Federalism and Regionalism.

He completed his PhD in Political Science at the European University Institute in 2015. He also holds an MPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford, an MA in European Studies from King’s College London, and a BA in History from the University of Milan.

Before joining the University of Edinburgh, Davide taught and conducted research at several UK universities, including the London School of Economics, SOAS, the University of Nottingham, De Montfort University, and Aston University.

His research explores the intersection of territorial politics, public policy, democratic representation, and party politics, with a particular focus on the rise of populism, the crisis of social democracy, growing sub-national electoral instability, and territorial inequalities in multi-level governance systems.

Main grants and projects

From 2023 to 2025, Davide was Principal Investigator of a project funded by the British Academy: “Exploring the Emergence of New Territorial Divides after Devolution: An Analysis of the Socio-Political Gap between Capital Cities and Peripheral Areas in Scotland and Wales”. In 2025, he was awarded a grant from the Royal Society of Edinburgh to investigate new party competition and right-of-centre movements in devolved contexts (in collaboration with Dr Alan Convery and Dr Fraser McMillan). Previously, he was Co-Principal Investigator (with Dr Ed Turner) on a major DAAD-funded project examining the crisis of German Social Democracy in comparative perspective (2017–2019). He was also Co-Investigator on another DAAD-funded project, led by Dr Turner, analysing shifting territorial politics in Germany and other European countries in the aftermath of the pandemic (2022–2024).

Publications

Davide is the author of four books and co-editor of one volume. His articles have appeared in leading international journals such as West European Politics, Government and Opposition, Party Politics, Journal of Public Policy, Journal of Social Policy, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Territory Politics Governance, Regional & Federal Studies, Publius: the Journal of Federalism, Local Government Studies, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, South European Society and Politics, Representation, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, and Political Research Exchange.