Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni

Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni

Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow, DPIR, University of Oxford

Globalisation and the politics of place

Journal articles

The following journal articles reflect my interest in how globalisation is reshaping domestic politics in European countries. Given that the economic effects of globalisation are highly uneven in spatial terms, focusing on “place” (and not just on the individual and national levels of analysis) can be a useful way to approach this topic. Rather than vieweing contemporary politics as being structured by an economic and an orthogonal cultural dimension, I am particularly interested in the ways in which traditionalist cultural attitudes often go hand-in-hand with regional economic decline in the context of globalisation.

  1. Roch Dunin-Wąsowicz and Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni (2025) ‘Geographical Dimensions of Populist Euroscepticism’, Political Studies Review 23(2)

  2. Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni, Max Kiefel and José Olivas Osuna (2022) ‘Voting for your pocketbook, but against your pocketbook? A Study of Brexit at the local level’, Politics & Society 50(1)

  3. José Olivas Osuna, Max Kiefel and Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni (2021) ‘Place matters: analyzing the roots of political distrust and Brexit narratives at a local level’, Governance 34(4)

Studying the effects of trade integration with firm-level microdata

In our working paper entitled “Participating in globalisation: How local trade integration affects people’s second-dimension preferences”, Sofia Vasilopoulou, Philip Schnattinger and I use firm-level microdata from the ONS Annual Business Survey to construct a novel measure of trade integration at the local level in the UK and study its effects on political preferences along the second dimension of politics. We find that individuals living in places that are well integrated in international markets and global value chains are more likely to support EU integration and view immigration favourably, and are less likely to support populist right parties. The paper offers a different perspective into the politics of globalisation, which are usually viewed through the lens of the China shock literature in political science.

Understanding Brexit at a local level

Did local context influence voters’ electoral choices in the 2016 EU referendum in the UK? Why did people in specific post-industrial or agricultural areas vote Leave, when exiting the EU was likely to be, by most scientific accounts, economically damaging? Can theories emphasising economic factors truly contribute to our understanding of a referendum result that appeared contrary to many voters’ economic interests? These were some of the questions that motivated our research team to start working on a project about the local-level context and impact of the 2016 referendum in five British local authorities: Barnet, Ceredigion, Mansfield, Pendle, and Southampton.

Beyond those questions, we also wanted to do a little experiment: If we produced a report about the impacts of Brexit that was locally relevant, combining the results of existing quantitative studies with the evidence collected through our own field work in each local authority, would it be possible to bring Leavers and Remainers together in one room and spark a forward-looking, evidence-based discussion about Brexit within each local community?

We addressed those questions adopting a case study-based, participatory research method. Our focus on a small number of case studies enabled us to identify the mechanisms through which different causal variables operate and interrelate in the context of “place”. One of our findings was that long-term socioeconomic trajectories are intricately connected to discourses about the nature of local challenges and their solutions. Studying this link is crucial for understanding how diffuse feelings of place-based, economically induced discontent found a concrete political expression through the Leave vote.

At the same time, our participatory research approach provided us with an opportunity for iterative knowledge exchange with members of the communities in our case study areas. We visited our case study areas not only in the context of our initial fieldwork, but also after we had written our case study reports, in order to present our findings to local stakeholders and get their feedback. These occasions strengthened the quality of our data and also encouraged meaningful, forward-looking discussion among scholars and citizens as well as Leave and Remain voters.

Researchers involved in the project: José Javier Olivas Osuna (coordinator), Mary Kaldor, Diane Bolet, Alexandra Bulat, Josh De Lyon, Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni, Kuba Jablonowski, Max Kiefel

Public engagement

  1. Documentary film about the Mansfield case study

  2. Recording of the discussion panel that we organised on the occasion of the launch of our Mansfield case study report. The event was organised in collaboration with Mansfield & Ashfield 2020. It took place at the Mansfield Central Library on 24/1/19 and was chaired by Dr. Lynn Oxborrow.

  3. Presentation of our findings at a public meeting in the House of Commons on “Brexit: Its Impact Nationally and Locally”, organised by GlobalNet21 and hosted by Bambos Charalambous MP on 11 March 2019. I participated in this event together with Jose Olivas Osuna and Diane Bolet.

  4. Blog posts:

Reports

From the Mansfield case study documentary film

From the presentation of our Mansfield case study report at the Mansfield Central Library on 24/1/19