Spyros A. Sofos

#RethinkingPopulism Lead Editor; Senior Fellow, LSE Middle East Centre

Spyros founded #RethinkingPopulism and is its lead editor. He is an Assistant Professor in Global Humanities at Simon Fraser University. Previously, he was a Senior Fellow, and a Research Officer at the Middle East Centre of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

His research explores the intersection of societal insecurity, identity and collective action and, to date, it has focused on Turkish politics and society, nationalism and populism in Europe and the Middle East, urban citizenship in the Middle East, European Muslim identities and politics, and the theory of populism.

His latest book – Turkey, Geopolitics, and the Age of Populist World-Making: Remapping Regional Orders (Routledge 2026) explores Turkey’s transformation into an active and influential emerging power under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. It argues that populist governance and foreign policy are not separate domains but expressions of a common political logic. Erdoğan’s populism does not simply shape Turkey’s international engagement; it extends into it, producing a distinct form of populist revisionism that reworks regional orders in line with domestically forged antagonisms.
His other books include Turkish Politics and ‘The People’: Mass Mobilisation and Populism (Edinburgh University Press 2023); Islam in Europe: Public Spaces and Civic Networks (Palgrave – co-authored); Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey (Hurst and Oxford University Press – co-authored). He has co-edited  Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe (Routledge), 

He has a PhD in Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies from the University of Copenhagen and a BSc in Politics and International Studies from Panteion University.