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School of Politics and International Relations

Dr Raffaele Bazurli

Raffaele

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow

Email: r.bazurli@qmul.ac.uk
Room Number: ArtsOne, Room 2.24
Website: https://raffaelebazurli.com/
Twitter: @RaffaeleBazurli

Profile

Dr Raffaele Bazurli is a political scientist and public policy scholar at Queen Mary University of London’s School of Politics and International Relations. Currently, he is a visiting researcher at Harvard University’s Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, where he is working on his project Sanctuary Policies for Irregular Migrants in European Cities (SPIMEC). For this research, he was awarded the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship, funded by UK Research and Innovation (2023–2025).

Raffaele’s research is inherently interdisciplinary, focusing on urban governance and politics, immigrant integration and asylum, and social movements. He is interested in how local officials and grassroots activists interact to shape governance in multi-level institutional settings—sometimes subverting national policies and sparking conflicts. He explores these dynamics through the lens of immigrant and urban poor rights, with a geographic focus on Europe and Latin America. Ultimately, his work raises broader questions about cities as transformative global players, whose policy experiments can pave the way toward a more just, democratic, and sustainable future.

 Raffaele’s research has been published or is forthcoming in journals across political science, sociology, and geography, including Policy and Societythe Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies; South European Society and Politics; the Urban Affairs Review; Government and Opposition; Territory, Politics, Governance; the International Political Science Review; Citizenship Studies; PS: Political Science and Politics; Politiche Sociali / Social Policies; and in various edited volumes. He is also writing his first book, Insurgent Reformists: Migration Policies and Activism in Barcelona and Milan, which brings together a decade of research.

Beyond academia, Raffaele has contributed to policy reports, opinion pieces, and policy engagement initiatives, such as Barrio Saldías and SIforREF. The British Academy, the European Union, the Government of Italy, the Research Council of Norway, and UK Research and Innovation have all supported my research.

Raffaele holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and Sociology from Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence (2020). Before joining the School of Politics and International Relations in 2023, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Queen Mary’s School of Geography, the University of Oslo, and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. He has also held visiting positions at The City University of New York, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Sciences Po Paris, and the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is a member of the Centre on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS) at Scuola Normale Superiore, The City Centre at Queen Mary, and the Soli*City network at Toronto Metropolitan University.

More information:  https://raffaelebazurli.com/  

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