James P. Cross

Office G314, Newman Building

University College Dublin

Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland

I am an Associate Professor of Political Science at University College Dublin (UCD) and Director of the Connected_Politics Lab. My research focuses on EU politics, computational political science, and text-as-data methods. I am particularly interested in how natural language processing (NLP) and large language models (LLMs) can be applied to political science research.

My current projects include ParliView, an AI-driven parliamentary transparency tool funded by a Google.org grant (EUR 1.5m), and a Research Ireland funded COALESCE project looking at the UN’s sustainability goals in the European Union. I co-founded the COMPTEXT Association and serve as its Secretary. I also founded the MSc in Politics and Data Science at UCD.

I received my PhD from Trinity College Dublin in 2011, and held postdoctoral positions at ETH Zürich and the European University Institute before joining UCD in 2014. My work has been published in journals including the Journal of European Public Policy, European Union Politics, Political Analysis, the European Journal of Political Research, and the Journal of Common Market Studies.

selected publications

CCR

Mapping Digital Campaign Strategies: How Political Candidates Use Social Media to Communicate Constituency Connection and Policy Stance

James P. Cross, Derek Greene, Stefan Müller, and 1 more author

Computational Communication Research, 2025

Bib HTML

@article{cross2025mapping,
  title = {Mapping Digital Campaign Strategies: How Political Candidates Use Social Media to Communicate Constituency Connection and Policy Stance},
  author = {Cross, James P. and Greene, Derek and M{\"u}ller, Stefan and Schoonvelde, Martijn},
  journal = {Computational Communication Research},
  volume = {7},
  number = {1},
  year = {2025},
}

JEPP

Speaking in Unison? Explaining the Role of Agenda-Setter Constellations in the ECB Policy Agenda Using a Network-Based Approach

James P. Cross, Derek Greene, Natalia Umansky, and 1 more author

Journal of European Public Policy, 2024

DOI Bib HTML

@article{cross2024speaking,
  title = {Speaking in Unison? Explaining the Role of Agenda-Setter Constellations in the ECB Policy Agenda Using a Network-Based Approach},
  author = {Cross, James P. and Greene, Derek and Umansky, Natalia and Calo, Silvia},
  journal = {Journal of European Public Policy},
  volume = {31},
  number = {11},
  pages = {3676--3702},
  year = {2024},
  doi = {10.1080/13501763.2023.2242891},
}

EUP

Legislative Amendments and Informal Politics in the European Union: A Text Reuse Approach

James P. Cross and Henrik Hermansson

European Union Politics, 2017

Sage Prize DOI Bib HTML

Awarded the Sage Prize for best article published in European Union Politics

@article{cross2017legislative,
  title = {Legislative Amendments and Informal Politics in the European Union: A Text Reuse Approach},
  author = {Cross, James P. and Hermansson, Henrik},
  journal = {European Union Politics},
  volume = {18},
  number = {4},
  pages = {581--602},
  year = {2017},
  doi = {10.1177/1465116517717071},
}

Exploring the Political Agenda of the European Parliament Using a Dynamic Topic Modeling Approach

Derek Greene and James P. Cross

Political Analysis, 2017

DOI Bib HTML

@article{greene2017exploring,
  title = {Exploring the Political Agenda of the European Parliament Using a Dynamic Topic Modeling Approach},
  author = {Greene, Derek and Cross, James P.},
  journal = {Political Analysis},
  volume = {25},
  number = {1},
  pages = {77--94},
  year = {2017},
  doi = {10.1017/pan.2016.7},
}

JEPP

A New Dataset on Decision Making in the European Union Before and After the 2004 and 2007 Enlargements (DEUII)

Robert Thomson, Javier Arregui, Dirk Leuffen, and 4 more authors

Journal of European Public Policy, 2012

DOI Bib HTML

@article{thomson2012new,
  title = {A New Dataset on Decision Making in the European Union Before and After the 2004 and 2007 Enlargements (DEUII)},
  author = {Thomson, Robert and Arregui, Javier and Leuffen, Dirk and Costello, Rory and Cross, James P. and Hertz, Robin and Jensen, Thomas},
  journal = {Journal of European Public Policy},
  volume = {19},
  number = {4},
  pages = {604--622},
  year = {2012},
  doi = {10.1080/13501763.2012.662028},
}