Alexandre Afonso

I am an Associate Professor in Public Policy at the Leiden University, Netherlands. My main fields of research are public policy and comparative political economy with a focus on welfare state and labour market reforms, the political economy of labour migration, and the role of parties and organised interests in policy reforms. My work has been published in the Journal of European Public Policy, Socio-Economic Review, European Political Science Review, Governance, Comparative European Politics and other outlets. My book “Social Concertation in Times of Austerity” was published by Amsterdam University Press in 2013. You can have a look at my publications and my profile on Google scholar.

Before joining Leiden University, I was a lecturer in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London (2012-2015). I have held postdoctoral research fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne (2011-2012) and the European University Institute in Florence (Max Weber programme, 2010-2011). I have also been a visiting fellow at Johns Hopkins University (SAIS, Washington DC, 2011) and the University of Amsterdam (2008-2010). I earned my PhD in Politics at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) in June 2010. I grew up in the French-speaking part of Switzerland and hold Swiss and Portuguese citizenships.

I occasionally blog here and am sometimes on Bluesky. Some things that I have written have been featured in the New York Times, Science, the Times Higher Education, The Nation and Slate among others, and I have written pieces for the Washington Post and CNN.com. I am a French native speaker, and besides that I am fluent in English, Dutch, Portuguese, and speak quite decent German, Italian and Spanish.