Jesse is a doctoral candidate in the Department of European and International Studies at King's College London, where his research examines the intersection of sexuality politics and nativism in contemporary European politics. His work explores how nativist attitudes and sexual-liberal positions combine at both the party and public opinion level, and how these ideological configurations vary comparatively across European nations. He is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) through the London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership (LISS-DTP), in the Politics, Public Policy and Governance pathway.

Jesse holds a BA in Political Studies (First Class Honours) from Queen Mary, University of London, and an MA in Human Rights Research (Law and Political Science) (Distinction) from the University of Manchester. He entered higher education as a mature student through a Foundation Programme in Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Essex, having previously worked in business management for international organisations.

Alongside his doctoral studies, Jesse has held a range of research and professional roles, including parliamentary researcher at the UK Parliament, data analyst for the Icelandic Constitutional Archives, and research contributor to EU Horizon-funded projects analysing gender attitudes across political parties. He has also contributed to academic teaching resources, including the textbook Politics UK, held a visiting researcher position at the Centre for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo, and has worked as a Data Research Assistant at British Future, a non-partisan think tank focusing on immigration, integration, and national identity.

Research interests

• Comparative European politics
• Quantitative and mixed-methods research design
• Nationalism, nativism, and the far-right
• Party politics and electoral behaviour
• Public opinion and social attitudes
• Sexuality, gender, and identity politics
• Masculinity and men's studies

Teaching

4AAOB101: British Politics (EIS)

5SSPP230: European Union: Power, Politics and Economics (DPE)

Office hours

Please book through Calendy:

https://calendly.com/jesse-grainger-kcl/office-hours-meeting

PhD research

Jesse's doctoral research examines how right-wing parties and publics across Europe combine liberal attitudes toward homosexuality with exclusionary stances on immigration — a phenomenon he conceptualises as homonativism. While populist radical right parties are conventionally associated with social conservatism and hostility toward minorities, many have strategically adopted pro-LGBT positions to portray themselves as defenders of national identity against allegedly "illiberal" outsiders. The project develops homonativism as an original theoretical contribution, distinguishing it from existing frameworks such as Puar's homonationalism, and situating it within contemporary debates on nativist politics, sexual liberalism, and the reconfiguration of belonging in European democracies.

The project employs a mixed-methods design combining party-level and public-level analysis. At the party level, Jesse constructs an original dataset of 394 party-election dyads across 29 European countries (1999–2024), drawing on manifesto coding alongside Chapel Hill Expert Survey positional data to track shifts in sexuality and immigration positions over time, assess issue salience, and identify where explicit homonativist appeals emerge. At the public level, he uses European Social Survey data spanning over two decades and 32 countries, applying multilevel logistic regression to identify individuals who hold sexually liberal yet nativist attitudes simultaneously, map their distribution across national and regional contexts, and assess the demographic and cultural determinants of such configurations.

The quantitative analyses are complemented by a comparative case study component, employing a Most Similar Systems research design with process tracing and documentary analysis to examine the conditions under which homonativist politics emerges and consolidates at the party level. Together, these analytical levels demonstrate how liberal values can be strategically re-framed in exclusionary ways, with significant implications for how scholars understand nativist politics and the conditions under which selective inclusion becomes a mechanism of exclusion.

PhD supervisors

Dr Isabelle Hertner and Dr Russell Foster

Latest publications

Grainger, J. (2026). Nonlegislative engagement with LGBTQ issues in the UK Parliament: evidence from EDMs, petitions, and representation. Parliamentary Affairs.

Grainger, J. (2026). Inclusive rhetoric, exclusive boundaries: strategic homonativism on the British right. British Politics, 21:5.

Grainger, J. (2024) Why Israeli-palestinian tensions in the UK matter for ReformUK, Europinion. Available at: https://www.europinion.uk/post/why-israeli-palestinian-tensions-in-the-uk-matter-for-reformuk

Grainger, J. (2024) An emerging homo-nativist electorate?, British Politics and Policy at LSE. Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/an-emerging-homo-nativist-electorate/

Grainger, J. (2024) ‘Coming In: Sexual Politics and EU Accession in Serbia - Koen Slootmaeckers’, Europe-Asia Studies, 76(5), pp. 813–814. doi:10.1080/09668136.2024.2339737