Roni Küppers

Hello!

I am a PhD researcher in the Department of Methodology at the LSE and a Fellow of the La Caixa Foundation. You can check my LSE page here. Previously I worked as a research assitant at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). I also previously worked in a project on social solidarity in contexts of high cultural diversity, commissioned by the Barcelona City Council to the Centre for International Relations (CIDOB).

My work focuses on the relationship between collective identity and political participation, and how this relationship can explain our capacity to imagine and enact political change in a context of mounting global challenges. At present, I develop this work in the field of peoplehood and populism, as well as nationalism and gender, and with a focus on West European countries (particularly, Spain and Portugal). I employ both qualitative and quantitative methods, chiefly in-depth interviewing, case-study designs, and multivariate statistics.

My thesis, now a book project, studies peoplehood and populism from the bottom up in Spain and Portugal. This research addresses puzzling political divergences across these two countries in recent years, exploring the reasons and implications of populism, but also building on these findings to inform critically extant theories of peoplehood and populism. It relies on extensive original data, chiefly in-depth interviews with discontent citizens, guided by an innovative approach to identity politics. The objective of this new approach is to better explain populist politics, and also to address two broader questions of critical importance: what is the status of modern peoplehood in societies of growing complexity? And does rising populist discontent contain the potential for its renewal?

My work has been supported by the La Caixa Foundation, the LSE, and the Humanitarian Trust.