Jake is the Editorial and Research Director for the Prosperity Institute, responsible for supporting the research team and the publications of the Institute. Alongside this, Jake’s research focuses on the structure of the British state, constitutional change, and the concept of the British people.
Prior to joining the Prosperity Institute, Jake worked in public relations and public affairs at College Green Group, where he worked on multiple public impact campaigns and with key allies of the United Kingdom. In parallel, from September 2023 to October 2024 Jake founded and directed the Institute for the Impact of Faith in Life, a research forum examining the role that faith played in the lives of people in the UK.
Jake studied for his PhD at the University of Birmingham, focussing on the political theories of populism, the construction of a people in the political imaginary and how populism constructs the people as a unique phenomenon. Jake passed his viva with no corrections in December 2022. During his PhD, from 2019 to 2023, Jake taught a range of modules in political science and theory, sociology, public policy and management, and research methods at the University of Birmingham, as well as teaching a course on British politics at University College, London. He also authored a paper, ‘There is no alternative’? The role of depoliticisation in the emergence of populism, published in the Politics Journal in 2022.
Whilst completing his PhD, Jake worked with Dr Juha Herkman at the University of Helsinki on the public perception of populism, for a project for openDemocracy. At the same time, Jake also worked with Dr Rakib Ehsan at the Henry Jackson Society on the British state’s inability to deport Islamist terrorists, and the Bow Group on Britain’s food security and supplies.
From 2016 to 2023, while at university and after, Jake ran the conservative publication The Mallard, which aimed to give a platform primarily for students on the right of British politics, but expanded to publishing established academics, politicians and leading activists across the Western world.