Liam Weeks has been a full-time lecturer in the Department of Government since September 2006. He is also an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University, Sydney since 2012. He is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, having been conferred with a BA in History & Political Science (2001), a Postgraduate Diploma in Statistics (2004) and a PhD in Political Science (2008). In 2009 he was conferred with a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education from University College Cork. Liam has been a visiting fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University (Sydney), the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, the Department of Economic and Politics at Waseda University, Tokyo, the Institute of Social Research in Swinburne University of Technology (Melbourne), the University of the South Pacific, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. From 2016 to 2019 he was an external examiner at the Department of Politics in the University of Lincoln. He is currently an external examiner at the University of Malta. He has been the recipient of a number of prestigious research grants, including an Irish Research Council Marie Curie Fellowship (2010-3), an Irish Research Council New Foundations Grant (2014 & 2016), a Royal Irish Academy Mobility Grant (2010), a Visiting Fellowship at Waseda University (2016) and Swinburne University (2010), and a Government of Ireland postgraduate scholarship from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (2002-5). He has also received Erasmus grants from the European Union for training and teaching activities at University College London (2014, 2015), the University of Malta (2016), the University of Ulster (2017), the Hertie School of Governance (2020, 2022)

My research interests are in comparative and Irish politics, specifically electoral systems, voting behaviour, political parties and non-party politics.Research projects I am currently engaged in include: An analysis of the impact of private members' bills for the Houses of the Oireachtas Parliamentary Research OfficeA comparative study of how parliaments operate without political parties (with Dr Narelle Miragliotta)The origins of the Irish party systemPopulism in the non-partisan context

PhD Supervision Liam is available to supervise PhD students in the areas of comparative politics, especially elections, electoral systems and voting behaviour. He also welcomes proposals on most aspects of Irish politics. Current Modules GV2218 -European Government & Politics GV2241 -Elections and Voting PO3001 -Politics dissertation GV4414 -Contemporary Debates in Irish Politics GV6118 -Political Science Research Methods GV6121 -Comparative Political Institutions