Dr Vladimir Bortun

After my PhD in political science at the University of Portsmouth (2015-2019), I worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Political Science at the Autonomous University of Barcelona on a project (MIGRADEMO). Since 2022, I have had a postdoctoral fellowship with the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at Oxford, working on the Changing Elites project. I joined St. John’s in 2024 as a Lecturer in Politics.

Teaching

I teach comparative politics (with a focus on Britain, Southern Europe, and Eastern Europe), political sociology, political thought, and European Union politics.

I am a critical political scientist whose research interests fall into three areas.
First, my PhD thesis investigated the transnational cooperation of the radical left during the Eurozone crisis and was published with Palgrave Macmillan in 2023. I have also touched upon other dimensions of this party family, including the conceptualisation of a new type of Euroscepticism (‘Disobedient Euroscepticism’) and of a new sub-family of parties (‘neo-reformist left’).
Second, I have explored the processes of political resocialisation that migrants go through, with a focus on return migrants who become politicians in their country of origin. I try to challenge some of the normative assumptions underlying the theoretical nexus between migration and democratisation.
Third, I have been looking at the impact of politicians’ class background on their political outlook and behaviour. I am developing a research agenda around the class politics of right-wing populist parties, hoping to instigate a materialist turn in the study of populism.

Recent Publications

• Bortun, V., Reeves, A., & Friedman, S. (2024). “We didn’t know what we were eating tomorrow: How Class Origin Shapes the Political Outlook of MPs in Britain”. Political Studies 0(0). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00323217241257006
• Bortun, V., Østergaard-Nielsen, E. & Cosciug, A. (2024) “It was us, from Italy, that made him mayor: An explanatory framework for migrant-led political change at the local level”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2024.2393656
• Bortun, V. (2023). Crisis, Austerity and Transnational Party Cooperation in Southern Europe: The Radical Left's Lost Decade. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Bortun, V. (2023). “A Reconceptualization of the Party Family: SYRIZA, Podemos, and the Emergence of the Neo-Reformist Left”. New Political Science, 45(3), 478-499. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07393148.2023.2235213
• Bortun, V. (2022). “Plan B for Europe: The Birth of ‘Disobedient Euroscepticism’?” JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 60(5), 1416-1431. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcms.13313