Alexandre Afonso

I am an assistant professor of public policy at Leiden University, Netherlands. I focus on the comparative political economy of labour markets and welfare states in Europe. My work has been published in academic journals such as the Journal of European Public Policy, Socio-Economic Review, European Journal of Political Research, and Governance, among others . You can have a look at my publications and my profile on Google scholar and Researchgate, where most of my work can be dowloaded in open access.

In May 2018, I was awarded a VIDI personal grant (2018-2023) from the Dutch Science Foundation NWO for a project on the relationship between immigration control and welfare state development. Information about this project can be found here.

Before joining Leiden University, I was a lecturer (Assistant professor) in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. I have held positions at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, the European University Institute in Florence and the University of Amsterdam. I earned my PhD in Politics at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) in June 2010. I grew up in Switzerland, hold Swiss and Portuguese citizenships, and speak French, Portuguese, Italian, German and Dutch, all with questionable accents.

I occasionally blog here and tweet here. My research has been reported in Science, the Times Higher Education, the New York Times, The Nation, Slate, El Paìs, and Mediapart. I have written for the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, the Daily Telegraph, CNN and Jacobin, among others.