Call for Papers

The Sixth Helsinki Conference on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation (HEPP6) will be held 18-20 May 2026 at the University of Helsinki and online. The call for papers and panel proposals is open until 31 October 2025.

Since 2019, the HEPP conferences have provided a space to explore themes related to populist mobilisation, polarisation, and the dynamics of emotional engagement in various political and mediatised contexts. In addition to this thematic core, 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 HEPP6, where, for example, PI Mikko Salmela has advanced his theorization of ressentiment as “sour grapes” in connection to populism.  

We invite submissions that explore a diverse range of themes, reflecting our ongoing work and recently completed projects, well beyond PLEDGE. We are excited about methodological innovations that, for example, combine discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis with computational methods, including those that make use of LLMs and AI. This includes our EP election study, which gathered an extensive dataset of short campaign videos from across the political spectrum during the 2024 European Parliament elections, capturing not only the data but also the experiences of our researchers. Additionally, we encourage participants to draw inspiration from HEPPsters’ individual project topics, such as discursive constructions of war in political rhetoric and imaginaries of sexuality and gender in culture politics and activism. 

Our past research has delved into (de)radicalization, societal resilience in transatlantic contexts post-COVID-19, and the interplay of time, space, and memory in populist movements. Notably, Emilia Palonen's recently published book, The Birth and Death of Liberal Democracy in Hungary, critically proposes a framework for the study of the logic and dynamics of populist politics and hegemony while analysing the evolution of Hungary's political landscape. This also opens the door to discussions of democratic resilience, autocratisation, and polarisation in all of its forms. We encourage applicants to consider these themes and other related topics as we strive to foster a rich dialogue at our conference. 

We welcome contributions from political science, media studies, social psychology, history, anthropology, sociology, memory studies, gender studies, urban studies, and other related fields. Traditionally, HEPP conferences have featured discussions on semi-peripheral regions such as the Global South and East Central Europe, and we hope to continue that this year. We also invite papers addressing ongoing conflicts, such as those in the Middle East, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Venezuela. HEPP6 invites papers and panels on the following and other related themes:  

  • Affects, a(nta)gonism, and political polarisation
  • Audiovisual political communication
  • Authoritarianism and illiberalism
  • Climate, crises, and grievances
  • Cultural populism, conspiracy theories, and misinformation
  • Emotional mechanisms of grievance and populist politics
  • Gender and intersectional positions in populism and polarisation
  • Grievance politics and the politics of victimhood
  • Hegemony, common grounds, and epistemic populisms
  • LLM and computational methods in large social media data on HEPP themes
  • Mediatised populism
  • Memory politics and the political (mis)use of time and space
  • Political frontiers and “us” building
  • Political humour and populist rhetoric
  • Political theory of populism
  • Populist challenges to democracy
  • Populist logics and dynamics
  • Post- and de-colonialism
  • Religion and populism
  • Tribalism, nationalism, and racism
  • Vulnerability, stigmatisation and self-representation
  • War and violent conflict 

After the conference, presenters are invited to submit their papers to be considered for the 5th volume of the HEPP Working Papers series.  

We always aim to cultivate a friendly, fun atmosphere at the HEPP conferences. To this end, we seek to gather international researchers at all career stages from a variety of fields to engage in conversation around our critical areas of interest.  

The conference is organised in collaboration with the PLEDGE Horizon Europe project and is co-funded by the European Commission. Views expressed here only reflect the views of the conference organising team, not the position of the European Commission. 

Important dates and submission details  

HEPP6 will take place on 18-20 May 2026 at the University of Helsinki and online (as with previous conferences, HEPP6 will be fully hybrid).   

The deadline for paper and panel submission is 31 October 2025. 

Paper submissions should include:  

  • A paper title
  • A 200-word abstract (max 1000 characters)
  • Five keywords answering the paper’s topic, method, theory, data, country case (if applicable) 

We further encourage the submission of panel proposals comprising three to five papers with a panel chair. Please include the abstract of the panel and paper abstracts according to the description above.  

You can submit your paper HERE or at the link below. 

You can submit your panel HERE or at the link below. 

Please note: we do not provide funding for travel or accommodation. You can find the conference fees here