Our faculty
Dr Cleo Davies
Assistant Professor in Politics and International Relations
Cleo joined Forward College in September 2024 and is teaching the courses Comparative Politics and International Political Economy at the Paris Campus.
She obtained a PhD in Politics from the University of Edinburgh, where she also taught for eight and a half years on a range of courses in the School of Social and Political Science. Cleo’s expertise lies in European politics, EU decision-making, and the role of international organisations in transnational governance, as well as UK-EU relations. Before joining Forward, she also worked as a Senior Research fellow on projects ‘Negotiating the Future’ and ‘Living with the Neighbours‘ as part of the UK in a Changing Europe programme.
Cleo takes a keen interest in knowledge exchange activities between researchers and decision-makers and regularly produces policy-relevant output and present research to stakeholders and decision-makers. Before academia, she worked for over five years in European politics and policy making in Brussels.
Research Interests
- European politics
- EU decision-making
- UK-EU relations in a comparative perspective
- The role of international organisations in transnational governance
Current teaching
- Comparative Politics
- International Political Economy
Select Publications
- Recent papers and reports
Cleo Davies and Hussein Kassim. Report: ‘UK-UK: What next?’, July 2024, UK in a Changing Europe,
Cleo Davies and Hussein Kassim. Report from the Living with the Neighbours Observatory: The UK and its neighbours: views across Europe, June 2024, UK in a Changing Europe
Mathieu Blondeel, Cleo Davies, Daniel Muth, Marene Elgershuizen. Towards a Progressive Geopolitical EU: Principles and Recommendations, Foundation for European Political Studies (FEPS), Brussels, May 2024
Jannike Wachowiak and Cleo Davies, UK-EU Relations Tracker, UK in a Changing Europe, published quarterly (2024 Q1, 2023 Q4, 2023 Q3, 2023 Q2, 2023 Q1)
Davies C. and Kassim, H. How does the EU organise and manage its relationship with the UK post-Brexit?, October 2023, Explainer for UK in a Changing Europe
Davies, C. (2023) ‘The impact of Brexit: Polity, politics, policy’, Journal of European Integration, 45:6, 963-969
Davies, C. and Kassim, H. ‘UK Bilaterals with EU member states since Brexit’, April 2023
Davies, C. (2023) ‘Negotiating the future: Understanding the absence of a UK-EU agreement on civil justice cooperation in family law‘, UK in a Changing Europe Research Paper, 04/2023
Christina Boswell, Kat Smith and Cleo Davies. Rethinking Policy Impact: Promoting Ethical and Effective Policy Engagement in the Higher Education Sector, October 2022
Regulation After Brexit Revisited, Hussein Kassim, Cleo Davies, Sean Ennis, and Andrew Jordan (eds.), October 2022
- Recent presentations
‘Reset in name only? The sticky legacy of the Brexit negotiations’, 3 September 2024, UACES Annual Conference 2024, University of Trento
Panel speaker Rencontres d’été GIS-Eurolab, Lille, 27-28 June 2024: ‘Future Possibilities for the UK-EU relationship’, Science-Po Lille
Panel speaker at the two-day workshop ‘The UK’s relationship with central Europe in times of political change’, 25-26 April 2024, Masaryk University, Brno
‘National EU Coordination in the UK: from member state to third country’, ECPR Standing Group on the EU, Universidade NOVA, Lisbon, June 2024, with Hussein Kassim
Presentation to the Scottish Government’s International School. ‘The EU’s approach to the UK: organization and future developments’, January 2024
Memberships
- Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
- Member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh SCOTLAND-EUROPE INITIATIVE series of workshops
- Member of The Academic Association for European Studies Association (UACES)
- Member of the Europa Institute, University of Edinburgh
- Member of the European Consortium for Political Research
