We are thrilled to announce that our CfP for HEPP6 on 18-20 May 2026 is out! Check it out and submit your papers and panels here. In addition to our core focus areas of emotions, populism, polarisation, the HEPP6 conference will include a special focus on the emotional dynamics of grievance politics and their impact on democracy. This is in line with the PLEDGE Horizon Europe project, which is supporting the conference. We hope to see you in Helsinki (or online) next May!
This event is part of a long running effort of the HEPP research group. Our research group and ourconferences are famed for their friendly, informal, and fun atmosphere, which we hope to replicate in 2026.
HEPP5, took place on 4-7 March 2025. As always, the event brought together scholars working on populist mobilisation, rhetoric, and logics across the world. It drew particularly on the research group’s work on the Social Contract in the CO3 Horizon project, and resilience, from the Trans-Atlantic ENDURE project. There will also be special sessions on the preliminary results of research done on the European Parliamentary Elections in 2024, which the group studied across Europe on social media focusing on short videos from Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. We were very excited to welcome our three keynote speakers: Dr. Marina Prentoulis, Dr. Asel Doolotkeldieva, and Dr. Allan Dreyer Hansen. You can read more about them and their talks on our Keynote Speakers page, and you can watch Allan's and Marina's speeches on our YouTube channel. The HEPP4 conference was held at the University of Helsinki 11-13 December 2023, with a special symposium day at the University of Lapland on 14 December 2023. The conference was organised on-site with hybrid options and streamed keynote sessions. The first edition took place before the pandemic in 2019, HEPP2 was fully virtual, and since HEPP3, we have operated in a fully hybrid format.
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