Biography

I am a political scientist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Brantford, Canada. My primary interests are in the fields of political communication, public opinion and political parties. I am originally from Edmonton, Alberta, and did my undergraduate degree in Political Science at the University of Alberta. After some time in Germany, including a fascinating internship at the German Bundestag, the Canadian embassy and a leading national television political talk show, I returned to Kingston, Ontario to do my graduate work. I obtained my PhD from Queen’s University in 2008 and then moved back to Germany to do my post-doctoral work at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies.

Interests

  • Political communication
  • Political parties
  • Public opinion

Education

  • PhD in Political Science, 2008

    Queen's University, Kingston

  • MA in Political Science, 2003

    Queen's University, Kingston

  • BA (Hons.) Political Science, 1999

    University of Alberta, Edmonton

  • Exchange Semester, 1997

    Philipps-Universität Marburg

Recent Posts

Public Spending Priorities in the 2018 and 2022 Ontario Elections

LISPOP commissioned a survey of voters during the 2022 election and we’ll be disseminating findings from it over the next few weeks. …
Last updated on Jul 20, 2022 2 min read LISPOP

Private and Public School Enrolment in Ontario

Did you know that the share Ontario students attending private schools is creeping steadily up? Here are the numbers and then the story …
Last updated on Nov 15, 2021 4 min read

Private School Enrolment in Ontario

Our five year old is in Grade 1 this year obviously everyoen’s public school experience in Ontario has been severely impacted in the …
Simon J. Kiss
Last updated on Oct 22, 2021 1 min read

Text Expander Footnotes

I’ve discovered a neat way to use TextExpander to make authoring slides in Markdown go much more quickly.
Simon J. Kiss
Sep 14, 2020 4 min read Data

Academic Hiring in Ontario

Introduction Alex Usher has a series of recent blog posts here, here, here and here looking at academic versus non-academic …
Last updated on Feb 20, 2020 9 min read
See all posts

Recent Publications

Narratives and the Water Fluoridation Controversy

Andrea M. L. Perrella, Simon J. Kiss, Ketan Shankardass
PDF Project

Subjective economic insecurity and attitudes toward immigration and feminists among voters on the Right in Canada

The recent success of far-right populism has led to a wave of public attention to its causes. Drawing on novel survey items from the …
PDF Project

The education and income voting divides in Canada and their consequences for redistributive politics

Profound changes in the nature of class cleavages in advanced capitalist economies have been documented in recent years. Some have …
PDF Project

The Changing Nature of Class Voting in Canada, 1965–2019

Much attention has been paid to the changing class cleavage that structured political conflict in the twentieth century. In contrast to …
PDF Project

Beyond Regions and Ideology: Using Cultural Theory to Explain Risk Perception in Canada

Cultural Theory (CT) has been widely used to explain variations in risk perception but has rarely been tested in Canada.This …
Kiss, Simon, Éric Montpetit, Erick Lachapelle
PDF Code Project DOI
See all publications

Recent & Upcoming Talks

Carbon Tax At The Crossroads

A recent presentation at Wilfrid Laurier University for the Department of Political Science’s Policy Dialogue
Mar 27, 2024 8:53 AM
Simon J. Kiss
Project Slides

Right Wing Populism and Municipal Governance: The Case of Toronto

Oct 9, 2020 12:00 AM
Slides

Adapting A Cultural Theory of Risk To The Canadian Context

Data Gaps and Provincial Politics aims to uncover sources of data on elections, election rules, party finance, party platforms, …
May 30, 2018 12:00 AM
Project Slides

Motivated Reasoning And Risk Management

May 14, 2018 11:20 AM University of Ottawa
PDF Project Slides

Economic Anxiety, Visible Minorities and Populism: Public Support for Toronto Mayor Rob Ford

Recent election results such as the UK ‘Brexit’ referendum on the European Union, Donald Trump’s ascendency to the …
Mar 29, 2018 7:32 AM
Slides
See all talks

Projects

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All Data Political Communication R Social Democracy Risk

Data, Reproducibility and Open Science

The natural and social sciences are moving more and more to requiring the sharing of code and data.

R

I am an avid user of the statistical software R for all my quantitative research projects.

Social Democracy

What are the prospects for social democratic parties in post-industrial societies?

Political Communication And Public Opinion

One of my major research interests is the field of political communication and public opinion. I have used both quantitative and …

Politics of Risk Perception

The bulk of my research since arriving at Wilfrid Laurier University has been to investigate the politics of risk perception, …

Professional Experience

 
 
 
 
 

Public Affairs Officer

University of Alberta

Feb 2002 – Sep 2002 Edmonton
 
 
 
 
 

Communications Director

Alberta New Democrat Caucus

Feb 1999 – Jan 2002 Edmonton, Alberta

Popular Topics

data Open Science Plain-text political-communication public-opinion R risk social-democracy university

Contact

  • 519-756-8228
  • 73 George Street, Brantford, ON N2L1Z9
  • Enter the Brantford Research and Academic Building and go to the third floor; I am the office closest to the stairwell
  • DM Me