Politics profoundly shapes people’s lives. Political decisions influence whether societies are healthy or unhealthy, peaceful or violent, resilient or vulnerable, sustainable or unsustainable. Yet many of the greatest threats to human wellbeing—from climate change and environmental degradation to human rights abuses, conflict and persistent poverty—are problems that political systems often struggle to address.
My research seeks to understand why.
Broadly, I study the politics of human wellbeing: how political institutions, public opinion, international cooperation and scientific evidence shape societies’ ability to respond to complex collective challenges. My work asks why governments respond differently to shared problems, how political incentives influence policy choices, and what conditions enable more effective, equitable and sustainable governance.
Although my research spans climate change, health, human rights, development and international politics, these are connected by a common question:
How can politics improve human wellbeing in an unequal and rapidly changing world?
I address this question using a combination of comparative politics, international relations, political economy of development, and public policy, drawing on methods including survey experiments, computational social science, causal inference, natural language processing, elite interviews, process tracing, and qualitative research.
Understanding the politics of wellbeing in a changing climate
Much of my research investigates how political systems shape outcomes that matter most for people’s lives.
Climate change provides perhaps the clearest example. The scientific evidence is overwhelming, yet political responses remain highly uneven. Through my work with the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, I examine how governments engage with the health dimensions of climate change and how politics influences progress towards healthier and more sustainable societies.
As Co-Chair of the Public and Political Engagement Working Group of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change and co-lead of the Politics and Governance Working Group of the Lancet Countdown in Europe, I work with researchers across public health, economics and environmental science to understand how political institutions can accelerate climate action while improving health and reducing inequalities. This work includes leadership roles in the Wellcome Trust-funded Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change project and the Horizon Europe-funded Climate Action To Advance HeaLthY Societies in Europe (CATALYSE) project.
More broadly, this research asks how governments balance short-term political incentives against long-term societal wellbeing—a challenge that extends far beyond climate policy.
Understanding political accountability
Political institutions also determine whether governments and other powerful actors are held accountable for violating human rights and harming people’s wellbeing.
My research on human rights and international development examines why governments sometimes defend international norms while at other times prioritise strategic or domestic political interests.
In my research on international aid and human rights, I investigate how aid donors respond to human rights violations, and the factors that influence their response. My articles with Lior Erez, “The donor’s dilemma: International aid and human rights violations” (British Journal of Political Science, 2019) and “The flag and the stick: Aid suspensions, human Rrghts, and the problem of the complicit public“ (World Development, 2023) demonstrate how political incentives shape international responses to repression. The latter article was awarded the prestigious Elsevier Atlas Award in 2025 for research that can significantly impact people’s lives.
Related work explores international diplomacy during Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act, the politics of humanitarian protection, and public attitudes towards accountability for war crimes. My recent collaboration with Neil Mitchell combines original datasets with experimental research to understand why some perpetrators of atrocities are prosecuted while others escape punishment.
Across these projects, I seek to understand how political institutions can better protect human rights and uphold international justice.
Understanding how evidence, ideas, and values change politics
Many of today’s political challenges are not caused by a lack of knowledge. Instead, they reflect the difficulty of translating evidence into political action.
A third strand of my research therefore examines how scientific evidence shapes public opinion and policymaking.
Recent work has explored whether presenting climate change as a public health issue changes political attitudes. In Positive, Global, Health or Environment Framing Bolsters Public Support for Climate Policies (Communications Earth & Environment, 2022), my co-authors and I show that highlighting the health benefits of climate action substantially increases public support for ambitious climate policies. Ongoing projects investigate how trusted messengers—including health professionals—shape attitudes towards climate action, disruptive protest and environmental policy.
Through the annual Lancet Countdown reports and related research published in The Lancet and The Lancet Planetary Health, I also study how scientific assessments influence political debate and policy around the world.
These projects contribute to a broader question that runs throughout my work: when does evidence become politically persuasive?
Measuring politics differently
Understanding political behaviour requires better evidence.
An important part of my research therefore develops new datasets and computational tools that allow scholars to study politics in novel ways.
Together with Slava Jankin and Alex Baturo, I developed the United Nations General Debate Corpus (UNGDC), now one of the world’s leading datasets for analysing political speech. Covering every speech delivered by governments at the United Nations General Assembly since 1946, the corpus has enabled hundreds of studies examining foreign policy preferences, international cooperation and global political priorities.
Our article Words to Unite Nations: The Complete United Nations General Debate Corpus, 1946–Present (Journal of Peace Research, 2025) presents the fully updated corpus and demonstrates how computational social science can deepen our understanding of international politics.
For me, methodological innovation is never an end in itself. New methods matter because they allow us to ask—and answer—better political questions.
An integrated research agenda
Taken together, my research argues that improving human wellbeing is fundamentally a political challenge.
Whether addressing climate change, protecting human rights, promoting sustainable development or strengthening international cooperation, progress depends on understanding the political institutions, incentives and ideas that shape collective action.
Ultimately, my goal is to produce research that advances political science while contributing to wider efforts to build healthier, fairer and more sustainable societies.
My work has been published in journals including the British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Peace Research, Political Studies, World Development, Communications Earth & Environment, The Lancet, PLOS One, and The Lancet Planetary Health, and has been supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Horizon Europe, Wellcome Trust, the British Academy, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, among others.
Niheer Dasandi 