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 works on business and labour politics, with a focus on the platform economy. She is particularly interested in questions of business power, workers’ rights and their capacity for organization. She also studies the political economy of Southern Europe.

Her research and writing have been published in Perspectives on Politics, the Journal of Comparative Politics, Regulation&Governance, and Renewal. A Journal of Social Democracy. She has been featured on Channel 4, UK in a Changing Europe, The Conversation and El País.

Her research agenda has been supported by KCL’s Global Engagement Partnership Fund, the EIS Departmental Research Fund, the LSE Seed Fund, CIVICA, the Mercatus Centre, and the Institute for Humane Studies.

More information is available at her website and Google Scholar page.

Office hours

Tuesday: 14.00 - 16.00 

Teaching

• Contemporary Politics in Southern Europe
• The Political Economy of Platform Capitalism

PhD supervision

Dr Valdez is open to supervise PhD students on the following topics:

• The politics of the platform economy
• Southern European politics
• Business politics
• Labour politics

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

• All About Status? The Politics of Regulating Platform Work. Accepted in Perspectives on Politics, 2026
• How Far-Right Parties are Born: Explaining the Rise of Spain's Vox. Co-authored with Gustavo Flores-Macías and Julius Lagodny. Accepted in Government and Opposition, 2026
• Platform Power and the Fragmented Workforce: Labour's Challenges in the Digital Economy. Accepted in Renewal. A Journal of Social Democracy, 2026
• 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.