28 Mar 2023 | All day | Room SG1, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge |
- Description
- Programme
- Call for papers
Description
Convenors
- Ayala Panievsky (University of Cambridge)
- Yong-June Park (University of Cambridge)
Speakers
- Kathleen Blee (Collaboratory Against Hate Research & Action Center, University of Pittsburgh)
- Nicole Curato (Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra)
Summary
Twenty-first-century global politics have seen the entrenchment of political movements inspired by populist right-wing values. The flourishing of populist politics worldwide has led to proliferating scholarship on the causes, characteristics and implications of right-wing populism for democratic societies. The burgeoning research on right-wing populism has given rise to new ethical dilemmas and emotional challenges for researchers, which – despite the increasing interest in populism studies – have been largely overlooked. We seek to address this timely blind spot by bringing together researchers of right-wing populism, and particularly those using qualitative and ethnographic methods, to share their experiences and explore the tensions in studying what Susan Harding has famously termed ‘repugnant others’.
This conference is aimed at advancing a more nuanced and sincere understanding of ethnographic methodologies when studying the populist right, by initiating an open conversation between academics and practitioners (i.e. journalists and documentarists) who are facing similar challenges. We believe that such a conversation, apart from creating a supportive emotional space, could inspire more innovative and creative methods and approaches to tackle right-wing populism. Importantly, this reflexive, global, and diverse CRASSH conference also highlights academic work that has been sidelined by the dominant Eurocentric scholarship on populism over the years.
The conference’s confirmed participants come from the Philippines, the Middle East, South Korea and beyond. We hope to inspire sociologists, anthropologists, digital ethnographers, journalists and culture producers from around the world to share their experiences from fieldwork in hostile environments, to reflect on them and on their meaning to knowledge production, and to learn from each other’s successes and failures.
For more information about this event, visit the conference website.
Supported by:
If you have specific accessibility needs for this event please get in touch. We will do our best to accommodate any requests.
Programme
10:30 - 11:00 | Welcome and opening |
11:00 - 12:00 | Keynote: |
12:00 - 13:00 | Who is ‘The Other’ here? Gender and right-wing populism Tamta Gelashvili and Audrey Gagnon (Center for Research on Extremism, University of Oslo) Catherine Stinton (University of York) Julia Leser (Humboldt University Berlin) |
13:00 - 14:00 | Lunch |
14:00 - 15:00 | Keynote: |
15:00 - 16:30 | Fieldwork or battlefield? The risks of studying the far-right Maria Carmen Fernandez (University of Cambridge), Tanya Quijano and Abbey Pangilinan Mohamed Salhi (Goethe Universität, Frankfurt) Ryan Switzer (Stockholm University) Kumud Ranjan (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi) |
16:30 - 17:00 | Break |
17:00 - 18:30 | Practitioners meet the populist challenge Sian Norris, journalist and author of ‘Bodies Under Siege: How the far-right attack on reproductive rights‘ Callum Hood, Head of Research at the ‘Center for Countering Digital Hate’ Seyward Darby, author of ‘Sisters in Hate: American women on the front lines of white nationalism’ |
18:30 - 20:00 | Screening of the acclaimed documentary ‘Unsettling’ Followed by Q&A with filmmaker Iris Zaki |
For more information about this event, visit the conference website. |
Call for papers
While the academic interest in right-wing populism worldwide has been booming in recent years, little attention has been given to the new ethical dilemmas, emotional challenges and concrete risks that ethnographic research of the populist right presents to scholars in the field.
This conference is aimed at advancing a more nuanced and sincere understanding of the use of ethnographic methods to study right-wing populist communities. We invite sociologists, anthropologists, digital ethnographers, journalists and other culture producers to an open conversation, where we can share our experiences from fieldwork in hostile environments, reflect on their meaning for knowledge production, and learn from each other’s successes and failures. Confirmed speakers will discuss their work in the Philippines, the Middle East and South Korea.
If this topic speaks to you and you have such reflections to share, please studyingrightwingpopulism@gmail.com, with the following:
- Name and affiliation
- An abstract of up to 200 words
- A link to published work on right-wing populism
As we wish to advance work that has been sidelined by the dominant Eurocentric scholarship on populism,
priority will be given to researchers who work in under-studied contexts.
Deadline: 30 November 2022