KU News Release

Acclaimed scholar named Sir Robert Worcester Distinguished Professor

Robert Rohrschneider

LAWRENCE — Robert Rohrschneider, an internationally acclaimed scholar with special expertise in the European Union, has been appointed the first Sir Robert Worcester Distinguished Professor in Public Opinion and Survey Research at the University of Kansas.

“Professor Rohrschneider’s intellectual interests in public opinion and politics include both advanced democracies and democratizing countries,” said Elaine Sharp, chair of the Department of Political Science at KU. “These interests will make him the focal point for multidisciplinary research development.”

Rohrschneider, a political science professor at Indiana University for the past 16 years, is a recipient of the Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research. Selected every two years, the prize is awarded by the European Consortium for Political Research. He was awarded the prize for his book “Learning Democracy: Democratic and Economic Values in Unified Germany.”

Rohrschneider also has published numerous articles in the leading political science journals about comparative public opinion, most recently about European integration. He has held visiting appointments at the University of Mannheim in Germany and the Institute for Political Science at Humboldt University in Berlin. His research has been funded by the Social Science Research Council and, most recently, by the German Marshall Fund to research European integration in Brussels. He was born in Germany but has lived in the United States for many years and has dual citizenship.

The professorship was established through a gift of $2 million to KU Endowment by top British political commentator and survey research pioneer Sir Robert Worcester. Sir Robert, who earned his undergraduate degree from KU in 1955, moved to Great Britain in 1969 to found Market and Opinion Research International, best known for public opinion polling, though it specializes in international sociocultural trends.

Based in London, Market and Opinion Research International was one of the 20 largest market research firms in the world before being sold to the Ipsos Group in 2005. Ipsos now has research companies in 46 countries. Sir Robert is international director of Ipsos and chairman of its Public Affairs research advisory board.

Sir Robert, who has dual citizenship in the United States and Britain, was named a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. He is chancellor of the University of Kent and honorary professor of government at the University of Kent, the London School of Economics and Warwick University.

Rohrschneider will join the KU faculty in academic year 2008-09, but will spend that year on a research fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies before taking up his post at Lawrence.

Sir Robert welcomed the appointment of Rohrschneider as a multidisciplinary, multinational scholar of stature, widely published and internationally recognized, and expressed his confidence that he will make an enduring contribution to the field.

The gift is managed by KU Endowment, the independent, nonprofit organization serving as the official fundraising and fund-management organization for KU. Founded in 1891, KU Endowment is the first foundation of its kind at a U.S. public university.

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