Vladimir Borțun

Vlad is a critical political scientist interested in political elites, left parties, transnational politics, and the EU. With a background in political philosophy (BA and MA at the University of Bucharest) and European Studies (MA at the University of Portsmouth), he holds a PhD in political science from the University of Portsmouth (2019). His thesis explored the transnational networking and cooperation among left parties in Southern Europe during the Eurozone crisis. Between 2019 and 2022, Vlad worked as a postdoctoral researcher on the MIGRADEMO project hosted by the Department of Political Science at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. The project explores the impact of migration on political processes in countries of origin. Vlad's work focused on the impact of migration experience on political elites. As of the end of 2022, he works as a Postdoctoral Fellow on the Changing Elites project, hosted by the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at the University of Oxford and dealing with how social and institutional change has altered the processes of elite formation in the UK over time. Here, Vlad focuses on the impact of class background on the ideology and decision-making of power elites. At the same time, he is developing a research agenda around the class character of right-wing populist parties in Western Europe. He is interested, in particular, in their economic policymaking and the class background of their party elites. Vlad's work is rooted in a historical materialist approach and has been published so far in the Journal of Common Market Studies, Capital & Class, New Political Science, Qualitative Research, and European Political Science. His first book was published in October 2023 by Palgrave Macmillan under the title "Crisis, Austerity and Transnational Party Cooperation in Southern Europe: The Radical Left's Lost Decade"