Roni Küppers

Hello!

I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Methodology at the LSE (thesis submitted) and a Fellow of the La Caixa Foundation. You can check out here my LSE page and my Google Scholar. 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 identities and political participation, and how this relationship can explain our capacity (or, incapacity) to imagine and enact political change. In a context of mounting systemic challenges, from structural political discontent to chronic inequalities, the need for change is increasingly related to rethinking the political foundations: who we are, how we are, and what we aspire to be (as nations, as democratic societies, etc.), with crucial implications for politics in the 21st century.

At present, I develop this work in the fields of peoplehood/populism, nationalism, and gender, and with a focus on West Europe (particularly, Spain and Portugal). I employ qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches.

My doctoral thesis, now a book project, studies peoplehood and populism from the perspective of ordinary citizens in Spain and Portugal. This research stemmed from an intriguing puzzle in recent years concerning two countries that have been widely regarded as "comparable" societies: despite similar contexts, the “populist decade” has seen rising populism and severe instability in Spain, while political disengagement and politics-as-usual have been the norm in Portugal. Employing extensive original data from in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation, the book explores this empirical puzzle by explaining the meaning and implications of different ways of channelling political discontent, and building on these findings to inform established theories and preconceptions about peoplehood and populism. To do so, I develop an innovative approach to populism that seeks to push beyond gaps in existing scholarship. The objective of innovation is to better explain populist politics, and also to address two broader questions of critical importance: what is the status of democratic peoplehood in societies of growing complexity? And does rising populist discontent contain the potential for renewing democratic politics?

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