Alex Bulat

Alex Bulat
CitizenshipRomanian and British
Known forfirst English county councillor of Romanian descent
Political partyLabour
MovementYoung Europeans

Alexandra Bulat is a British-Romanian politician who has served on Cambridgeshire County Council since 2021. She was a Labour party candidate in the 2024 general election.[1] She is the first English county councillor of Romanian descent.[2]

Early life and education

Bulat was mainly raised in Romania although she spent a year in the UK as a young child while her father worked for the NHS. Returning as a student, she initially had poor English proficiency.[3]

She studied her undergraduate degree at the University of Sussex. She then went on to gain a master's degree from Cambridge and a docotrate from University College London.[3]

Her doctorate was based on research on exploring whether local contact affected attitudes towards EU migrants in 'a comparison of British, Romanian and Polish residents' views in two English local authorities in the context of Brexit'.[4] Her studies included ephemera in the British Library where her case study analysis identified a bias in the materials against migrants from certain EU countries.[5] A recent collaboration on EU citizens’ perceived identity is conducted with Professor Tanja Bueltmann of Strathclyde University.[6] She was later co-author of a study funded by EU Horizon Fund to study the impact of 'growing up abroad' as which compared Italian and more recent Romanian cohorts.[7]

Political career

Bulat is a Labour Party councillor on Cambridgeshire County Council. She was elected at the 2021 local elections for Abbey ward winning 41.77% of the vote and a majority of 205 despite a 25.76% increase in the Green party votes compared to the previous election,[8] and has represented St Ives South & Needingworth ward since 2025. In March 2024, Bulat was selected by Labour as the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Huntingdon for the 2024 General Election: she came second with 16,758 votes, behind the Conservative candidate Ben Obese-Jecty with 18,257.[9]

Social justice activism

Bulat won the University College London's Provost Public Engagement 'Find Your Voice' Award in 2020 for public engagement by an early career researcher, and a founder member of 3million and Young Europeans network. She volunteers with charity Settled which helps EU people on application for 'settled status', following the UK Brexit arrangements.[10] She wrote a blog for the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in 2019,[11] and commented in Al Jazeera to on the freedom of movement arrangements finally agreed for Gibraltar on 31 December 2020.[12]

Bulat spoke about incipient racism in Romanian language posters about shoplifting appearing in British supermarkets. And undertook an analysis of the attitudes to migration identified in campaign policy fliers for the EU Referendum.[13] She was one of the 33 Labour councillors who signed an open letter to The Guardian calling for a confirmatory referendum on Brexit.[14]

As an outspoken advocate of EU citizens rights and a dual British-Romanian citizen, she shared her experiences with The London Economic Review, BBC and at Labour party events.[15][16] And queried the route to citizenship during the Brexit transition period, as reported in The Independent.[17]

At the closing date in June 2021, for those not yet confirmed to have settled status in the UK, Bulat and others commented on a late surge in awareness and the backlog in applications risking a loss of rights.[18] The BBC reported her views that young Europeans would lose their rights, and commented on the need for a 'physical proof of status'.[19] Her research was into attitudes to migrant workers who may have had to take work that could be considered 'low skilled' compared to the future 'points system' and how that may block access to specific labour markets currently relying on EU migrants in 2019.[20] In the debate on voter identification for voting in the UK,[21] Bulat and others produced a report on the current and potential impact on under-represented groups in London.[22]

References

  1. ^ "Meet the Labour Party's election candidate for Huntingdon". The Hunts Post. 23 May 2024. Retrieved 2026-02-05.
  2. ^ "Dr Alexandra Bulat, Author at Politics.co.uk". Politics.co.uk. Retrieved 2026-02-05.
  3. ^ a b "Alexandra Bulat, born in Romania, she has lived in Great Britain for seven years. She is not there to take jobs away from the British but to study them". Nuoveradici.world (in Italian). 22 April 2019. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  4. ^ UCL (5 July 2017). "Alexandra Bulat". UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES). Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  5. ^ "Alexandra Bulat". The British Library. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  6. ^ "Researchers bid to find out how Brexit has affected EU citizens living in the UK". The National. 16 February 2021. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  7. ^ Moroşanu, Laura; Bulat, Alexandra; Mazzilli, Caterina; King, Russell (4 July 2019). "Growing up abroad: Italian and Romanian migrants' partial transitions to adulthood". Ethnic and Racial Studies. 42 (9): 1554–1573. doi:10.1080/01419870.2018.1501505. ISSN 0141-9870. S2CID 149708904.
  8. ^ "Election". elections.cmis.uk.com. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  9. ^ "Huntingdon – General election results 2024". BBC News. Retrieved 2024-07-05.
  10. ^ UCL (28 October 2020). "Dr Alexandra Bulat wins a Provost Public Engagement Award 2020". UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES). Archived from the original on 2021-10-23. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  11. ^ "Bulat, A". National Institute of Economic and Social Research. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  12. ^ Freedom of Movement agreed for Gibraltar – Alexandra Bulat reacts 31.12.2020, 31 December 2020, retrieved 2021-05-12
  13. ^ "Who Said What About EU Migration? – Alexandra Bulat – Conway Hall". conwayhall.org.uk. Archived from the original on 2021-07-09. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  14. ^ Letters (9 January 2019). "Labour should back another referendum | Letter". the Guardian. Retrieved 2021-12-13.
  15. ^ "Party Conferences 2021 – Partner with us". British Future. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  16. ^ "Cambridgeshire and Peterborough councils votes for zero tolerance on abuse". BBC News. 23 March 2023. Retrieved 2026-02-05.
  17. ^ "UK should remove barriers to becoming British, report warns". The Independent. 10 December 2020. Archived from the original on 2020-12-10. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  18. ^ "Britain is much more European than anybody thought". The Economist. 1 July 2021. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  19. ^ Peel, Shaun; Rigby, Nic (13 June 2021). "EU settlement: Fears people may miss post-Brexit deadline". BBC News. Retrieved 2021-12-13.
  20. ^ Bulat, Alexandra (May 2019). "'High-Skilled Good, Low-Skilled Bad?' British, Polish and Romanian Attitudes Towards Low-Skilled EU Migration". National Institute Economic Review. 248: R49–R57. doi:10.1177/002795011924800113. ISSN 0027-9501. S2CID 159180786.
  21. ^ Allegretti, Aubrey (4 July 2021). "Millions in UK face disenfranchisement under voter ID plans". the Guardian. Retrieved 2021-12-13.
  22. ^ Hammoud-Gallego, Omar; Lawall, Katharina; McRae, Isabelle; Moise, Raluca; Wanga, Stephanie; Bulat, Alexandra; Pop, Elisabeth (2 December 2021). "London Voices: the journey to full participation | Citizenship & Integration Initiative report funded by Trust for London and the UK Democracy Fund". Trust for London. Retrieved 2021-12-13.

Councillor information

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