Former GIS Department Head

Alistair Cole is Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po Lyon and former Head of the Department of Government and International Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. He graduated top of his class from the London School of Economics in 1980 and earned his PhD in Political Science from Balliol College, University of Oxford, in 1985. Between 1985 and 1999, Professor Cole held academic positions at Oxford, Caen, Aston, Keele, and Bradford, before joining Sciences Po Lyon (2015–2019) and later Hong Kong Baptist University (2019–2024).

Professor Cole has published extensively in the fields of comparative politics, public policy, and territorial politics. His work is widely cited, with an H-index of 37 and over 5,100 citations according to Google Scholar. He has received research funding from a range of sources, including the UK's ESRC, AHRC, British Academy, and Leverhulme Trust; French funding bodies such as PALSE-IDEX-ANR; the European Union through the Jean Monnet network; and the Hong Kong Research Grants Council.

He is the author of 26 books (9 sole-authored, 6 co-authored, and 11 edited or co-edited), and has published in leading journals in the discipline, primarily in English—Governance, Political Studies, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of European Public Policy, Public Administration, Journal of Common Market Studies, West European Politics, European Journal of Political Research, Journal of Public Policy, International Political Science Review, Geopolitics, Territory Politics and Governance, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, China Perspectives, British Politics, French Politics, Publius, Politics and Policy, Parliamentary Affairs, Government and Opposition, Nationalities Papers, Regional Studies—as well as in French—Revue française de science politique, Revue internationale de politique comparée, Revue française d’administration publique, and Revue d’études comparatives Est-Ouest.

His most recent book, Analysing the Trust–Transparency Nexus: Multi-Level Governance in the UK, France and Germany (co-authored with Ian Stafford and Dominic Heinz), was published by Policy Press in 2022.