Roni is a PhD student in Social Research Methods supervised by Dr Ellie Knott, Professor Patrick Sturgis and Professor Jonathan Hopkin.

Before joining the programme, he worked as a research assistant at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and as a lecturer at EAE Business School. Previously he also worked as a research assistant at CIDOB, a think tank focusing on international relations. He holds a BSc in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Pompeu Fabra University (2019) and an MSc in Political Sociology from LSE (2020), for which he was awarded the Department's 2020 Hobhouse Memorial Prize.

Roni’s doctoral research employs a mixed-methods approach that seeks to innovate the methods and theories we use to understand the link between collective identities and political behaviour. More specifically, his research focuses on constructions of peoplehood and their relation to contemporary populist politics. He is currently exploring these issues through a comparative case study of the political mobilisation of discontent citizens in Spain and Portugal, charting the interrelation between ecology, identity and participation across the rural-urban divide. By improving our understanding of the political significance of collective identities from a bottom-up perspective, the aim is not only to unveil the micro-level determinants of phenomena such as populism, but also to illuminate shifting macro-structural trends of (post)modern politics. This research is funded by a Fellowship granted by the La Caixa Foundation (Fellowship code LCF/BQ/EU21/11890039).