Yannis Stavrakakis

Professor Stavrakakis is currently Professor of Political Sciences in the School of Political Sciences at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, where he is also directing the research project POPULISMUS: Populist Discourse and Democracy co-financed by Greece and the EU’s European Social Fund.

Professor Stavrakakis undertook his PhD at the University of Essex on New Directions in the Theory of Ideology and the Case of Green Ideology, under the supervision of Professor Ernesto Laclau. He has held academic posts at Nottingham and Essex, and joined the Aristotle University in 2006.

As Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the Queen Mary University of London, he will be joining SPIR’s Political Theory & the History of Ideas research group, working with Dr Lasse Thomassen. During his stay, Professor Stavrakakis will provide seminars and workshops on discourse theory and the use of Lacanian psychoanalysis for political analysis. He will also work with staff and students at QMUL, and beyond, on the current economic crisis and the emergence of a populist/anti-populist discursive cleavage, which has been the focus of much of his recent research and is a topic of great importance to understanding the challenges faced by Europe and the UK today. As part of this, he will deliver three Leverhulme lectures in the Autumn term 2014 on the economic crisis, debt societies, and populism.