Professor Cristina Leston-Bandeira

Profile

Professor Leston-Bandeira works on parliament and public engagement and she joined POLIS in 2015, having previously been Professor at the University of Hull and having worked on parliaments for over 30 years.

Professor Leston-Bandeira is Chair of IPEN, the International Parliament Engagement Network, a network that brings together academics and practitioners from across the world to share practices on public engagement and discuss ways to enhance it. She was also Chair of the UK Study of Parliament Group between and 2019 and 2022 and is a Constitution Unit Fellow.

Besides her research, Professor Leston-Bandeira has a strong interest for student-centred approaches to teaching politics. Amongst other prizes in recognition of the quality and innovation of her teaching, she has been awarded a Higher Education Academy National Teaching Fellowship (2012) and the UK Political Studies Association Bernard Crick Main Prize for Outstanding Teaching (2010).

In 2025, Professor Leston-Bandeira was awarded the Sir Isaiah Berlin Prize by the UK Political Studies Association for her “outstanding professional contributions to political studies”. Cristina was recognised for being “instrumental in promoting the relationship between parliaments and citizens” and for “her pioneering work on symbolic representation and public engagement”, which has “profoundly shaped the subfield of parliamentary and legislative research in the UK and beyond.”

Responsibilities

• Chair of IPEN - the International Parliament Engagement Network

Research interests

Professor Leston-Bandeira’s research focuses on the relationship between parliament and citizens, particularly public and digital engagement. She is interested in understanding the methods parliaments have developed to engage with the public, having focused particularly on petitions in recent years.

She has recently led research projects on Breaking barriers to engagement and on developing Guides on Citizen Engagement for Parlilaments, after being involved in two major research projects. One funded by the EU and led by Professor Emma Crewe (SOAS) on ‘A Global Comparative Ethnography of Parliaments, Politicians and People: representation, relationships and ruptures’; and the other funded by the AHRC & ESRC and led by Professor Richard Huzzey (Durham University), on ‘Petitioning and People Power in Twentieth-Century Britain’.

She was also part of an AHRC GRCF funded project on Parliaments and People, led by SOAS, and also co-led a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust grant on how the UK Parliament has engaged the public in the legislative process, having before led an ESRC study on how parliaments manage their image and public engagement.

Professor Leston-Bandeira also regularly gives evidence to parliaments in the area of public engagement, having been one of eight Commissioners of the Digital Democracy Commission set up by the Speaker of the House of Commons.

• A Global Comparative Ethnography of Parliaments, Politicians and People: Representation, Relationships and Ruptures
• Breaking barriers to engagement with parliaments
• Deepening Democracy in Extremely Politically Fragile Countries: Networking for Historical, Cultural and Arts Research on Parliaments and People
• Developing Guides on Citizen Engagement for Parliaments
• Enhancing Parliamentary Evaluation of Democratic Engagement Programmes
• Legal Advice to Legislatures – Supporting a Professionalising Legislature
• Petitioning and People Power in Twentieth-Century Britain
• The Petitions Committee: Developing a New Style of Public Engagement
• Truly Engaging Citizens with the Parliamentary Process? An Evaluation of the Public Reading Stage in the House of Commons

Qualifications

• PhD, University of Hull
• Licenciatura, ISCTE, University of Lisbon

Professional memberships

• Political Studies Association
• Study of Parliament Group
• European Consortium for Political Research
• Research Committee for Legislative Scholars

Student education

Professor Leston-Bandeira’s main area of teaching is Parliament, particularly on issues relating to its relationship with the public and engagement.

She is also personal tutor to students, often from the degree courses of Politics and Parliamentary Studies and Politics.

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Democratic Engagement

Current postgraduate researchers

• Alastair Morgan
• Emma Brewis