Jonas von Hoffmann is a doctoral student at Exeter College, working under the supervision of Professor Ezequiel Gonzalez Ocantos.

Jonas' research interests include drug policy, policy reform, legislative politics, social movements, political and criminal violence, drug trafficking and Latin America. He is particularly interested in the politics of drug policy reform in Latin America and has conducted fieldwork in and published about cannabis reform in Uruguay.

Jonas' thesis examines the variation of recent cannabis policy reforms in Latin America. Why and how do cannabis reforms occur and what accounts for differences across the region? Why has Uruguay legally regulated cannabis from seed to smoke, Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of autocultivo and Chile’s President allowed medicinal uses of cannabis by decree? To answer these questions, Jonas conducts a comparative analysis of the reform process in Uruguay, Mexico and Chile, using elite interviews, discourse analysis and process tracing.

Jonas holds a B.A. in Politics, Psychology and Sociology from the University of Cambridge (2013) and a M.Phil in Latin American Studies from the University of Oxford (2015). He was awarded the Crowley Price for my Masters’ dissertation, held an Amelia Jackson Scholarship from Exeter College and currently his research is funded by the ESRC.