Political Science and International Affairs
Associate Professor of International Relations
PGCE., University of Warwick, U.K., 1992
M. Phil., Birmingham University, U.K.,1997
Ph.D., Brunel University, London, 2005
Originally from London, Nicholas Startin obtained a Ph.D. in Politics at Brunel University. He joined JCU as an Associate Professor in 2022. He is a former Head of the Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies (PoLIS) at the University of Bath in the UK and is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Global Governance Institute in Brussels. His research focuses primarily on Euroscepticism and opposition to the EU, centering on political parties, public opinion, referenda, and the media. More recently, his research has looked at the UK’s relationship with the EU, pre and post Brexit. He also researches the Radical Right in Europe with a primary focus on transnational networks of opposition in the European Parliament. As a fluent French speaker following his undergraduate degree in European Studies, he has also published on the French Rassemblement National (RN).
In 2018, Professor Startin was elected Chair of the University Association of Contemporary European Studies (UACES), Europe’s leading membership association in the discipline. Prior to this, he was co-founder of the UACES Comparative Research Network on Euroscepticism. He has co-edited two highly cited “open competition” special issues on the subject in top-ranking journals, and has co-edited two Routledge edited volumes, including The Routledge Handbook of Euroscepticism. He is currently co-editing a second edition due for publication in 2026.
In 2020, he was shortlisted for the prestigious International Political Science Association (IPSA) Meisel Laponce Award for the best article between 2015-2019 in the International Political Science Review (IPSR) for his 2015 published article predicting Brexit, titled "Have we reached a tipping point? The mainstreaming of Euroscepticism in the UK." He has two co-authored articles, “Euroscepticism as a persistent phenomenon” in The Journal of Common Market Studies and “Euroscepticism, from the margins to mainstream” in The International Political Science Review, both of which have more than 400 citations on Google Scholar. He is currently working on a project investigating Generation Z’s attitudes towards Brexit and the UK’s future relationship with the EU.
Professor Startin has experience working with policymakers and stakeholders in the EU and has been invited as a speaker at major European conferences by several international networks, including the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), the French Institute of International Relations, and Networking European Citizenship Education. He has an established broadcasting media profile both in the UK and in France and has made numerous appearances on the BBC, France24, and other networks speaking on issues such as Brexit, Euroscepticism, the Radical Right, as well as European, UK, and French elections.
He has extensive University lecturing experience, having taught at three UK universities on a wide range of modules at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in the fields of European Politics and International Relations. At John Cabot University he has taught on the following undergraduate courses: PL440 Euroscepticism and the Future of the EU; PL361 Globalization and Democracy; PL333 Populism; PL223 Comparative Politics; PL250 Western European Politics.
He also teaches PL652 (Populism in Europe) in JCU’s MA in International Affairs. His latest article, co-authored with Dr Kathryn Simpson, “Immigration as a Strategic Driver for Brexit: The Right-Wing Tabloid Press and the 2016 Brexit referendum,” is due for publication in the Fall of 2025.
