King's College London

The appointment follows Professor Jennifer Rubin’s decision last October to step down upon her appointment as ESRC Executive Chair.

Bobby will take up the position as the new Director from September. He will lead the Institute to ensure that it continues to have significant impact, using innovative ways to identify, explore and address pressing societal issues both nationally and internationally.

Speaking of his appointment Bobby said: ‘I am delighted to be joining The Policy Institute at King’s, and excited about working with such a brilliant team, drawing on the immense expertise across King’s.  My focus at Ipsos MORI for the last two decades has been ensuring that high quality public policy research achieves the impact it deserves, alongside raising the profile of our work so that it is valued more widely. The Policy Institute has achieved so much already, and I look forward to building on that great success.’

Bobby joins the Policy Institute from Ipsos MORI where he is the Managing Director of the Ipsos MORI Social Research Institute, leading a team of 230 researchers in London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Belfast and Brussels, and Global Director of Ipsos Social Research Institute, across 30 countries.

While at Ipsos MORI, Bobby spent time on secondment at the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and as a User Fellow at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the LSE.  He has worked across most public policy areas in his 24 years in research, leading multi-disciplinary teams developing, monitoring and evaluating many of governments’ biggest policies and programmes.  

Bobby has served on many expert panels and advisory groups including for central government on housing, integration and local government, for the Resolution Foundation, Demos, IPPR, the RSA, Penna Public Sector and the University of York, and is on the board of the Campaign for Social Science.

He is a frequent public speaker and commentator, having appeared on most key news programmes, including the Today programme, Newsnight, ITV News at 10, BBC News at 6 and many others. He has written widely on social policy issues, including in the Guardian, Sunday Times, Wall Street Journal, Prospect, New Statesman, the Conversation and many others.  He is publishing a book on our misperceptions of social realities, drawing on Ipsos’ unique global studies The Perils of Perception, published by Atlantic Books on 6^th September. 

Announcing his appointment, Executive Dean for the Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy, Professor Frans Berkhout said:

"We are delighted that Bobby Duffy will be joining the Policy Institute at King’s as Director. Bobby is someone who thinks deeply about policy and politics, and we look forward to his leadership in helping focus King’s expertise on critical policy problems in Britain and internationally."