Aberdeen wins grant to carry out Brexit constitutional research

The University of Aberdeen has won a £2.5m grant from the Economic & Social Research Council to examine, in real time, the effects of Brexit on the constitutional dynamics of the UK.

The research team will be led by Professor Michael Keating, Professor of Politics and the University of Aberdeen director of the Centre on Constitutional Change, an inter-university research centre led by the Universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh. It also includes political scientists and legal scholars at the Universities of Cambridge, Cardiff, Cork and Stirling.

Professor Keating commented: “Membership of the European Union played a role in holding the United Kingdom together. Brexit has destabilised these arrangements and revealed deep differences across the nations.

“In the next two or three years, decisions will need to be taken on Brexit that will shape the UK constitution for the future, but without much time for study and deliberation.

“This country is undertaking a real-time experiment in constitutional change and a game without fixed rules or a referee. The project will monitor these claims and decisions, seek to explain them and assess their significance.”