Ricardo Soares de Oliveira is Professor of Political Science at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris and Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and a BA from the University of York. He was awarded a Leverhulme Trust/British Academy Senior Fellowship in 2023.

He works on political science and contemporary history, with a particular focus on African politics, governance, and international relations. He has conducted extensive fieldwork and published on topics such as post-colonial statehood, political corruption, and economic development.  Among his books is Oil and Politics in the Gulf of Guinea and Magnificent and Beggar Land: Angola since the civil war.