Spyros is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. He has a PhD in Politics/Regional and Cross-Cultural Studies from the University of Copenhagen and a BSc in Politics and International Studies from Panteion University.
He has previously worked as a Research Officer at the LSE Middle East Centre on the Kuwait Programme Ecologies of Belonging and Exclusion: An Intersectional Analysis of Urban Citizenship in Kuwait City project. Prior to joining the LSE, he worked as Lecturer and Research Coordinator at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University; Senior Research Fellow at Kingston University; Senior Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Portsmouth and held visiting positions at Siena, Tartu and Istanbul Bilgi Universities.
Spyros's 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, Turkish Politics and ‘The People’: Mass Mobilisation and Populism (Edinburgh University Press, 2022), explores the emergence of populism in contemporary Turkey and its genealogy as a tradition of action and discourse. His other publications include Islam in Europe: Public Spaces and Civic Networks (Palgrave, 2013, co-authored with Roza Tsagarousianou), Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey (Oxford University Press, 2008, co-authored with Umut Özkirimli), Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe (Routledge, 1996, co-edited with Brian Jenkins).
Spyros initiated and is lead editor of #RethinkingPopulism, is currently part of the team of an FCDO-funded PeaceRep project on Global Fragmentation of Peacebuilding; PI of The Lived Experience of Being Muslim among British Youth of Middle Eastern Origin project funded by the LSE Research and Impact Support Fund (RISF) and LSE Research Infrastructure and Investment Fund and a mentor in the Swedish Institute-funded Co-design for Sustainable, Resilient and Inclusive Urban Spaces project.