James moved to Coventry University in 2018 from King’s College London, where he had lectured in Politics and International Relations since 2015. He holds a PhD in Political Science from UCL, where he also served as Director of MSc Democracy and Comparative Politics from 2013-15.

His research on Central and Eastern Europe has focused on the ways that competing ideological projects such as liberalism and ethnic nationalism shape both elite politics and citizens’ everyday lives. His recent work has been published in the Journal of European Public Policy, JCMS, Journal of Democracy, Comparative European Politics and East European Politics. He is the author of one monograph – Cultures of Democracy in Serbia and Bulgaria: How Ideas Shape Publics (2014; paperback 2016), which was awarded the BASEES George Blazyca Prize. He has also written numerous journalistic articles, including for Foreign Policy magazine, Open Democracy and has appeared as a pundit on BBC Radio 4.

Consistent with his analytical focus on the spread of ideas, he has used ethnographic methods, focus groups, discursive institutionalism and quantitative survey analysis. He is now working on a British Academy-funded project aimed at interpreting socio-political turbulence in Bulgaria in the context of the country’s democratization.

James has won a Trailblazer Award to fund an incoming PhD student on the project "Contentious Civil Societies and Democratization in Southeastern Europe" from Septmeber 2024.

Prior to taking up his post at Coventry, James supervised 17 MSc Dissertation projects at University College London (Department of Political Science) and a further two at King's College London (Dept. War Studies), all of which were at least passes. (At CU, since 2018, he continues to supervise BA Dissertation projects, of which there have 50+ so far.)