Profile

Dr. Joseph Pozsgai-Alvarez is a Peruvian political scientist specialized in anti-corruption and public integrity, founder of the Japan Network of Anti-Corruption Researchers (JANAR), and Steering Committee member of the Standing Group on (Anti-)Corruption and Integrity of the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR).

He started his career, fresh out of college, as an intern at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers of Peru, where he joined the taskforce in charge of developing corruption prevention policies of mandatory application at the national level.

He was awarded the Japanese Government (MEXT) Scholarship from 2010 and earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Tsukuba in 2016. Since then, Dr. Pozsgai-Alvarez has worked at the University of Tsukuba and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies of Kyoto University, before joining the Human Sciences All-English Undergraduate Programme in 2021.

Research Interests

Dr. Pozsgai-Alvarez is passionate about all forms of research and professional activity related to fighting corruption around the world, including such topics as abuse of power, access to public information, compliance and ethics training, clientelism, conflict of interests, nepotism, due diligence, electoral fraud, regulatory capture, ethics / morality / integrity, and many others.

He was the editor of The Politics of Anti-Corruption Agencies in Latin America, published by Routledge in 2021, and currently leads the project “Multidimensional measurement of corruption in Southeast Asia and Latin America”, funded by the  Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI) program. He is also co-editing the Routledge Handbook of Anti-Corruption Research and Practice. Additionally, he has served as Consultant in the Western Hemisphere Anti-Corruption Index projects developed by John Jay College of Criminal Justice, with the goal of measuring the incidence of corruption and the implementation of anti-corruption policies across Latin America and the Caribbean.

His core research interest has pushed him to become familiar with fields of science beyond politics, such as social psychology, organizational studies, and machine learning, and he often participates in research projects that combine them. He often adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the topic he explores, as he believes that there is always something to be gained by getting different sources of expertise involved.

Teaching

  • Globalization Studies
  • Political Economy
  • Introduction to Global Studies
  • Statistics for Social Research
  • East Asian Politics
  • Introduction to Politics
  • Global Citizenship
  • Quantitative Research Methods
  • Ethics and Criminology