Robert Mattes is Professor of Government and Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde, and Adjunct Professor at the Nelson Mandela School for Public Governance at the University of Cape Town.  As a co-founder of the South African National Election Survey (a regular series of post-election surveys dating back to 1994), he is a long-time observer of elections, campaign, and voting in that country.

As a consultant for various donors and government agencies, he has also designed and conducted surveys and other research projects in Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.  He is also co-founder of, and Senior Adviser to Afrobarometer, a ground-breaking regular survey of public opinion in 35 African countries, and has also has helped to launch and run other major research projects such as the African Legislatures Project (Co-Principal Investigator), a systematic study of 17 African parliaments from 2008 to 2012.

His research focusses on the development of democratic attitudes and practices in South Africa and across the continent. He is the author of The Election Book: Judgment and Choice in the 1994 South African Election (Cape Town: Idasa, 1995), and co-author (with Michael Bratton and E. Gyimah-Boadi) of Public Opinion, Democracy and Markets In Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and (with David Denemark and Richard Niemi) of Growing Up Democratic: Does It Make A Difference? (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016). He has also authored or co-authored articles in leading journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, British Journal of Political Science, World Development, Journal of Democracy, Democratization, and Party Politics.  He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (1992).