Yannis Stavrakakis

Yannis Stavrakakis studied political science at Panteion University (Athens) and received his MA degree from the Ideology and Discourse Analysis Programme at the University of Essex, where he also completed his PhD. He has lectured at the Universities of Essex and Nottingham before taking up a position at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2006. His research primarily focuses on contemporary political theory (with emphasis on psychoanalytic and poststructuralist approaches) and on the analysis of ideology and discourse in late modern societies (with emphasis on populism and anti-populism, environmentalism, post-democracy and the role of artistic practices). He is the author of Lacan and the Political (Routledge, London & New York 1999), The Lacanian Left (Edinburgh University Press/ SUNY Press, Edinburgh and Albany 2007) and Populism: Myths, Stereotypes and Reorientations (Hellenic Open University Press, Athens 2019), co-author of Populism, Anti-Populism and Crisis (Nefeli, Athens 2012) and co-editor of Discourse Theory and Political Analysis (Manchester University Press, Manchester 2000), Lacan & Science (Karnac, London 2002), Aspects of Censorship in Greece (Nefeli, Athens 2008) and The Political in Contemporary Art (Ekkremes, Athens 2008). His edited Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalytic Political Theory was published in 2020 (Routledge, New York 2020). He has served two consecutive terms as vice-president of the Hellenic Political Science Association and has been Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Queen Mary University of London (2014-5) and Visiting Professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence (2019). He was one of the founding co-conveners of the Populism Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association (UK) and since 2014 he is directing the POPULISMUS Observatory.