Jimena Valdez joined the Department of European & International Studies at King’s College in September 2022. Before joining King’s, she was a Lecturer in Comparative Politics at City, University of London, and a postdoctoral fellow in Comparative Political Economy at the London School of Economics. She earned her PhD in Government in 2020 at Cornell University.

Research

Jimena’s research is in comparative political economy. She studies the organization of capital and labour, focusing on what business and workers want, why do they want it, and how do they organize to get it.

She advances this research in two main agendas. In her book project, What Business Wants: The Politics of Labour Reform in Portugal and Spain, she studies the resistance of business in these two countries to labour market reforms promoted by conservative governments during the Eurozone crisis. In particular, she argues that employers’ associations have been the main obstacle for change in labour policies.

In her other project, Über-State: The Political Economy of Platform Capitalism, she advances a theoretical framework to understand the politics around platform firms, exploring three angles: the specific type of business power these firms have, the way platform firms take over core state functions, and how technology entrepreneurs organize to advance their preferences.

More information is available at her website.

Teaching

• Contemporary Spanish politics
• Platform capitalism: platform firms and the state

PhD supervision

Dr Valdez is not taking on new PhD students.

Projects

Research project on Digital Trade Integration that brings together scholars from the LSE, the EUI, Bocconi University, and the Hertie School. Funded by CIVICA. See more here.

Publications

• Valdez, J. (2022). The politics of Uber: Infrastructural power in the United States and Europe. Regulation & Governance. doi:10.1111/rego.12456.
• Valdez, J. (2021). What Capital Wants: Business Interests and Labor Market Reform in Portugal and Spain. Comparative Politics, 53(4), pp. 571–596. doi:10.5129/001041521x16059843939568.