Rate My Professor Benjamin Moffit

Dr Benjamin Moffitt is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations within the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. Recognized as the leading Australian university researcher in Political Science by The Australian's 2026 Research Magazine, he holds a PhD in Government and International Relations from the University of Sydney, along with BA (Hons) degrees in Sociology and Communications from the University of Wollongong. Prior to Monash, Moffitt served as Associate Professor at Australian Catholic University and held postdoctoral research fellowships at Uppsala University and Stockholm University in Sweden. His research centers on contemporary challenges to liberal democracy, with a particular expertise in populism, democratic theory, radical and reactionary politics, visual politics, comparative politics, cultural politics, and political representation. Moffitt has secured over $1.5 million AUD in competitive research funding, including an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award for 'The Visual Politics of Populism' ($402,972 AUD), a Discovery Project on 'Populism's Heartlands' ($343,345 AUD) as lead Chief Investigator, and a Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation grant (4.2 million SEK) on democratic self-defense.

Moffitt is the author of influential books such as The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style and Representation (Stanford University Press, 2016), Populism (Polity, 2020), and Political Meritocracy and Populism: Cure or Curse? (Routledge, 2020, with Mark Chou and Octavia Bryant). He co-edited Populism in Global Perspective: A Performative and Discursive Approach (Routledge, 2021) and has a forthcoming book, The Visual Politics of Populism (Oxford University Press). His scholarly work has garnered over 8,500 citations and features prominently in journals like the Australian Journal of Political Science, Review of International Studies, and Political Geography. As co-editor of the Edinburgh University Press series Politics/Media/Culture - Critical Interrogations and Associate Editor of the Australian Journal of Political Science, Moffitt shapes the field. In 2018, he was named one of Australia's top 5 researchers in the humanities and social sciences by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. His insights have been featured in The Economist, The Washington Post, BBC News, and The Guardian.