*CFP* “EMOTIONS, POPULISM AND POLARISED POLITICS, MEDIA, AND CULTURE”, UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI

Emotions, Populism and Polarised Politics, Media, and Culture

MaPo/WhiKnow Conference

August 19-20, 2019

University of Helsinki, Finland

Confirmed keynote speakers: EmmyEk lundh (King’s College London) and Mark Devenney (University of Brighton).

Globally hyped populism and polarised politics require attention to the ways in which emotional engagements and performance intertwine. Our two-day conference looks at cases of politics, media, and culture, and explores the link between emotions and populism, polarizing politics that spills over to media and culture.

The conference is organized by two Academy of Finland funded projects, Mainstreaming Populism in the 21st Century (MaPo), and Whirl of Knowledge: Cultural Populism in European Polarised Politics and Societies (WhiKnow). It is also organised in connection with two Helsinki Summer School courses “Rhetoric-Performative and Post-Foundational Analysis” and “Populism on the Loose in Europe and Beyond”. Both draw on the political philosophy of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, taking forward the discourse theoretical, hegemony-focused Essex school approach.

The aim of the conference is to bring together a variety of international researchers at all career stages dealing with a broad range of topics that employ a post-structuralist and/or post-foundational approach to critical enquiry. The conference seeks to address different issues from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, especially those exploring the intersection of different positionalities and challenging bounded national contexts. 

Some indicative themes are:

• Populism and social movements
• Radical democracy
• Subjectivity, affects and gender
• Politics, polarisation, hybrid media
• Cultural populism and politics

Participant profile

We look forward to researchers from different fields of humanities and social sciences (political science, sociology, area and cultural studies, history, media and communication studies, gender studies, indigenous studies, anthropology etc.) whose research deals with post-structuralist and post-foundational discourse theory and its affiliated fields. We encourage the participation of early-career researchers. MA and PhD students, who are participants of the aforementioned summer school courses, can take part in the conference as guests. They can also take part as presenters in panel sessions devoted specifically to their research projects on Wednesday, August 21.

Organisation, and costs

In order to apply, please send your abstract (200-300 words) with heading to marina.vulovic @helsinki.fi by April 15, 2019. Selected participants will be notified by April 30, 2019. Participants are encouraged to submit written papers by August 5, 2019.

The modest conference fee 50/80 euros includes tea, coffee, and lunches, as well as the conference dinner on Monday. The summer school course students do not pay extra for participating at the conference.