Research: Kevin Arceneaux Elected Director of CEVIPOF

Kevin Arceneaux, Professor of Political Science, has been elected director of Sciences Po's Centre for Political Research (CEVIPOF). He took office on 1 January 2024 and succeeds Martial Foucault, who had held this position since 2014. Anne Muxel will accompany him in this new challenge as deputy director.

An international director to strengthen transversality and excellence

Kevin Arceneaux is American, and the first international director of CEVIPOF, a centre that was founded more than 60 years ago. His appointment testifies to the excellence, international reputation and openness of this historic Sciences Po research centre, whose researchers have been studying French, but also international, political life for several years now.

As director of CEVIPOF, Kevin Arceneaux will lead initiatives aimed at strengthening the excellence and uniqueness of this research centre, renown in particular for the quality and relevance of its studies and analyses of elections.

“I sincerely thank all of my colleagues at CEVIPOF and theCNRS for their trust, and I am very honoured to begin this new mission. As the European elections will take place next June, I particularly want to make them a major subject of research within our centre. I also wish to strengthen the transversality between the three poles of CEVIPOF: the analysis of elections and opinion studies, the life of institutions and political philosophy. Finally, as part of Sciences Po’s greater outreach, I intend to open CEVIPOF, its research and its events to the public,” comments Kevin Arceneaux.

Professor of Political Science, Kevin Arceneaux studies public opinion and political media. After a doctorate at Rice University, then a post-doctoral fellowship at Yale within its Institution for Social and Policy Studies, he joined the permanent faculty of Temple University in 2005. He first worked there as Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, then joined its Institute for Public Affairs in 2006. In 2013, he became director of the Behavioral Foundations Lab at Temple University. In 2018, he was named the Thomas J. Freaney Jr. Professor at Temple University.

In 2021, Kevin Arceneaux became a teacher and a researcher within Sciences Po and CEVIPOF research team which, in 2019, welcomed him as a guest researcher. At the same time, he continues to work for the Temple University Behavioral Foundations Lab as an associate researcher.

CEVIPOF, a major centre for research in political science

CEVIPOF (Centre for Political Research at Sciences Po) was founded in 1960 by Jean Touchard. It became a joint Sciences Po-CNRS research centre in 1968. Ever since it was first created, CEVIPOF has been considered to be one of the major centres for research in political science as demonstrated by academic appraisal, feedback from the public debate arena and the expertise it provides to government. While it offers an in-depth focus on the political sphere in France, much of the work carried out at the centre adopts a comparative approach while other themes are global in scope. The centre plays a vital role at the interface between research and politics providing a valuable resource for political actors, society at large, economic decision makers and the media.

CEVIPOF is a multidisciplinary research centre, which draws on an extended landscape of methodological resources. These include quantitative and qualitative methodologies to process surveys and opinion polls, longitudinal studies, big data and discourse analysis, theoretical comparative research, and also a number of techniques specific to socio-physics. CEVIPOF has been conducting systematic electoral studies since 1968 when it became a joint Sciences Po-CNRS centre, thus providing a unique and cumulative series of data comparable over time.

The 24 researchers and 27 doctoral and post-doctoral students of CEVIPOF publish their work in a wide variety of leading international journals and are regularly invited to present their research at international academic events. The centre hosts a number of visiting researchers throughout the year. It also organises conferences and academic events on a regular basis, thus creating a platform for its ever-expanding international network to interact and develop their mutual interests in the political sciences.