Tim Haughton joined the University of Birmingham in 2003 having previously taught at University College London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), Sheffield University and Comenius University in Bratislava. Initially appointed as Lecturer in the Politics of Central and Eastern Europe, he was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2006, Reader in European Politics in 2012, and Professor of Comparative and European Politics in 2022. He has taken on a number of significant administrative roles in the University including Head of POLSIS (2016-18), Director of CREES (2012-14), Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes in POLSIS (2018-21) and POLSIS Director of Research (2022- ). Professor Haughton is a founding deputy director of the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR).
He has held Visiting Fellowships at Harvard University’s Center for European Studies, the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, the Institute of International Relations in Prague, Colorado College and was an Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Fellow at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC.
Professor Haughton has published widely in a number of journals including Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Comparative European Politics, East European Politics, East European Politics and Societies, Electoral Studies, Europe-Asia Studies, Government and Opposition, Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Party Politics, Perspective on Politics, Political Studies Review, Politics and Policy and West European Politics. He has also written several articles for the Washington Post. He is the co-author with Kevin Deegan-Krause of The New Party Challenge: Changing Cycles of Party Birth and Death in Central Europe and Beyond (2020), the author of Constraints and Opportunities of Leadership in Post-Communist Europe (2005), the editor of Party Politics in Central and Eastern Europe: Does EU Membership Matter? (2011) and was the co-editor with Nathaniel Copsey of the JCMS Annual Review of the European Union for nine years (2008-2016). His research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Nuffield Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, the Centre for East European Language Based Area Studies (CEELBAS) and the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation.
Professor Haughton has good links with the policymaking community, having briefed inter alia five British Ambassadors to Slovakia, and given several presentations on Central European politics at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London and at the State Department in Washington DC.