Academic Information

PhD in Government, The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London, UK
 Thesis: ‘Civilian Control of the Military in Portugal and Spain: a Policy Instruments Approach’,2006-2012

Post-Graduate Certificate in Higher Education (Associate Level), LSE,  2010–2011

MSc in Public Policy and Administration, LSE, 2005–2006

Strategies For Europe Graduate Programme, EDHEC, Graduate School of Management, Lille, France

Licenciatura en Investigación y Técnicas de Mercado, ETEA, Faculty of Economics and Business Science, University of Cordoba, Spain, 1998–2000

Licenciatura en Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, ETEA, Faculty of Economics and Business Science, University of Cordoba, Spain, 1994–1999

Languages: Spanish, English, French, Portuguese and Italian

Academic positions held

Principal Investigator Populism and Borders: a Supply- and Demand-Side Comparative Analysis of Discourses and Attitudes (PBSDCA), since 2021

Investigador Asociado a LSE IDEAS en The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), since 2020

Principal Investigator Interdisciplinary Comparative Project on Populism and Secessionism (ICPPS), since 2019

Research Project Coordinator 'Debating Brexit at a Local Level' – Conflict & Civil Society Research Unit, LSE, 2017-2019

Guest Lecturer, LSE Custom Programmes, 2016–2018

Higher Education Consultant and Student Advisor, LSE Life & LSE Education Strategy Unit, 2014-2018

Editor and Co-Investigator, Euro Crisis in the Press, LSE, since 2013

LSE Fellow and Teacher, ‘LSE100: The LSE Course’, LSE, 2011-2017

Graduate Teaching Assistant, ‘GV101 – Introduction to Political Science’. Department of Government, LSE, 2007–2009

Research activity

José Javier Olivas Osuna is Associate Professor and the Principal Investigator of the “Populism and Borders: a Supply- and Demand-Side Comparative Analysis of Discourses and Attitudes” project at Department of Political Science and Administration of UNED in Madrid. He is also Research Associate at LSE IDEAS and has also done public policy consulting work for the EU and other international organisations. He holds PhD in Government (LSE), an MSc in Public Policy and Administration (LSE). He previously completed University degrees in Economics and Business (ETEA, University of Córdoba), Market Research (ETEA) and European Studies (EDHEC, Lille). He led and contributed to successful bids for important research projects and won several scholarships and awards. José Javier led the “Interdisciplinary Comparative Project on Populism and Secessionism”, coordinated “Debating Brexit impact at local level: a mixed methods comparative study” (with Mary Kaldor) and several learning and teaching innovation activities and projects at the LSE. He also co-led the project “Democracia y actitudes populistas en Andalucía: un análisis comparado multidisciplinary” (with Manuel Arias Maldonado) and has participated in other projects such as Psycorona, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) and the CIVICA consortium project “Local mobilization against the EU. Territorial dimensions of populist Euroscepticism”.

His research interests include radical politics, borders, disinformation, communication, and democratisation. He engages in theoretical, methodological, and comparative work. For example, he quantifies and contrasts populist features in political manifestos and speeches, and in collaboration with a team of psychologists and leading populism scholars, has developed a new scale of populist attitudes and beliefs. He designed and conducted surveys on social and political views in different countries. He also introduced a new machine learning tool to quantify and compare the ideational context. His work has been published in social sciences journals such as, European Journal of Political Research, Governance, Political Studies, Politics and Society, Political Research Exchange and European Journal of Communication and is the author of the monograph Iberian Military Politics (Palgrave).

He writes policy papers for international organisations, such as the EU Parliament, EU Committee of the Regions, UNHCR/ACNUR, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is frequently consulted by politicians and journalists and quoted in media. For instance, he has spoken as expert at the Spanish Congress, Department of National Security, European Parliament and British House of Commons. He is active on X and Bluesky. José Javier speaks Spanish, English, French, Portuguese, and Italian.

Selected publications:

-Olivas Osuna, J. J., Martín, M., Barrada, J. R., Moyano, M., & Clari, E. (2025). Varieties of Populist Attitudes in Brexit Britain: Socio-Political and Psychological Correlates of a New Multi-dimensional Scale. Political Studies.

-Olivas Osuna, J. J. (2024). A fence of opportunity: On how Vox’s radical right populist narratives frame and fuel crises in the border between Spain and Morocco. Journal of Language and Politics.

-Pamies, C., Olivas Osuna, J.J., Santana, A. (2024). Disagreeing to Agree: Populism and Consensus Among Members of Parliaments and Their Voters. American Behavioural Scientist.

-Dunin-Wąsowicz, R., Crăciun, C., Olivas Osuna,  J.J., Rammelt, H. (2024) Bridging the Divide Between Structural and Actor-Oriented Explanations of Populism: A Research Agenda for the Study of Populist Euroscepticism Through a Territorial Perspective. Political Studies Review.

-Campolongo, F. & Olivas Osuna, J. J. (2024) Times of Crises: Ideology and Party System Transformations in Spain. Partecipazione e Conflitto (PACO), 17(3): 629-646

-Olivas Osuna, J. J., & Burton, G. (2024). Populism at the UN: comparing Netanyahu’s and Abbas’s speeches, 2010–19. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies.

-Olivas Osuna, J.J., Bélanger, J. & Clari, E. (2024) Populist Attitudes and Radical Activism in the USA. In Patterson, K. & Hidalgo-Tenorio, E. (eds.) Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Discourses of Extremism. 2024. London: Routledge.

-Olivas Osuna, J.J, et al. (2023) Quantifying the ideational context: political frames, meaning trajectories and punctuated equilibria in Spanish mainstream press during the Catalan nationalist challenge. Political Research Exchange.

-Olivas Osuna, J.J. (2022). Populism and Borders: Tools for Constructing "The People" and Legitimizing Exclusion, Journal of Borderlands Studies, 10.1080/08865655.2022.2085140, 1-24

-Olivas Osuna, J.J. y Rama, J. (2022). Recalibrating populism measurement tools: Methodological inconsistencies and challenges to our understanding of the relationship between the supply- and demand-side of populism, Frontiers in Sociology, 10.3389/fsoc.2022.970043, 1-21.

-Olivas Osuna, J.J., Arias Maldonado, M. y Barrio, A. (2022) El Populismo de Vox y Podemos: Análisis Multidimensional de dos Evoluciones Divergentes, A. Valencia y B. Fernández-García (eds) En los márgenes de la democracia liberal: Populismo, nacionalismo y radicalismo ideológico en Europa. Granada: Comares, 23-45.

-Arias Maldonado, M., Olivas Osuna, J.J. y Clari, E. (2022) Narcisismo colectivo, populismo y perfiles políticos en Andalucía y Cataluña, Revista CENTRA de Ciencias Sociales, 1(2), 1-17

-Olivas Osuna, J.J. (2022). The Populist Radical-Right in Spain, M. Laruelle (ed.) Conversations on Illiberalism: Interviews with 50 scholarsundefined . Washington DC: Illiberalism Studies Program, The George Washington University. ISBN ol979-8-9865831-0-5, 89-93.

-Olivas Osuna, J.J., Kiefel, M. & Gartzou Katsouyanni, K. (2021). Place matters: Analyzing the roots of political distrust and Brexit narratives at a local level. Governance, 34(4): 1019-1038

-Olivas Osuna, J.J. (2021). Euroescepticismo y populismo: el caso del Brexit. In Gratius, Susanne & Rivero, Angel (eds.) Populismo y política exterior en Europa y América. Tecnos

-Olivas Osuna, J.J. (2021). Populismo en España: fundamentos teóricos y relatos dominantesundefined . Araucaria, 23(47), 371-401.

-Olivas Osuna, J.J. & Rama, J. (2021). COVID-19: a political virus? VOX’s populist discourse in times of crisis. Frontiers in Political Science. 

-Freier, F., Bird, M.  Brauckmeyer, G. ;Kvietok, A., Licheri, D. ;Luna Román, E., Olivas Osuna, J.J., & Ponce, L. (2021) Diagnóstico de la Cobertura de la Situación de Personas Refugiadas y Migrantes Universidad del Pacífico & UNHCR/ACNUR Perú.

-Gartzou-Katsouyanni, K., Kiefel, M. & Olivas Osuna, J.J. (2021). Voting for Your Pocketbook, but against Your Pocketbook? A Study of Brexit at the local level. Politics & Society.

-Olivas Osuna, J.J. (2020). From chasing populists to deconstructing populism: A new multidimensional approach to understanding and comparing populism. European Journal of Political Research, 60(4): 829-853.

-Olivas Osuna, J.J. (2019). Revolutionary versus Reactionary: Contrasting Portuguese and Spanish Civil-Military Relations during Democratization. War & Society. 38(3): 225-248.

-Volintiru, C. & Olivas Osuna, J.J. (2018). Preventing corruption at local and regional level in South Mediterranean countriesundefined European Committee of the Regions (CoR).

-Kyriakidou, M. & Olivas Osuna, J.J. (2017). The Indignados protests in the Spanish and Greek press: Moving beyond the protest paradigm? European Journal of Communication. 32(4): 457-472.

-Olivas Osuna, J.J. (2014). Iberian Military Politics: Controlling the Armed Forces During Dictatorship and Democratisation. Palgrave MacMillan. ISBN 978-1-137-32537-2.

Professional experience

Research Consultant in Public Policy and Spanish Politics, since 2012

Founder and Director of Netivist (netivist.org), Londres, 2013-2017

Project Manager ‘APOLO Spain’, Madrid-Paris, Renault, 2003-2005

Supply Chain Manager, Renault, Paris, 2001-2003

Commercial Analyst, Renault, Paris, 2000-2001