Keynotes

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Emmy Eklundh, PhD, Lecturer, Dept. of European and International Studies, King's College London

  • Emmy Eklundh is a Lecturer in Spanish and International Politics at King’s College London. She researches and publishes on democratic theory, social movements, and populist parties in Europe, and in particular on the Spanish case. Throughout Emmy’s works runs a general interest in the role of affect and emotions, and social media. Emmy has published several articles on this topic, and is the editor of the volumes Politics of Anxiety (2017), and the forthcoming Populist Manifesto (2019), both with Rowman and Littlefield International. At the conference, she will be discussing her most recent monograph, Emotions, Protest, Democracy: Collective Identities in Contemporary Spain, published with the Routledge series Advances in Democratic Theory.

  • Presentation title: Emotions, Protest, Democracy: Collective Identities in Contemporary Spain

Mark Devenney, PhD, Principal Lecturer, School of Humanities, and Co-Director of the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics, University of Brighton

  • Mark Devenney researches and teaches critical/poststructuralist theory and radical politics. He has recently completed a three-year research project on left wing populism in global perspective. Mark is the author of Ethics and Politics in Contemporary Theory (2004/2011); Discourses and Practices of Terrorism (co-edited Bob Brecher 2010/2015) and Towards an Improper Politics, (October 2019). He has published on among other topics post-colonial theory and politics; resistance literature and aesthetics; post-Marxism; discourse theory; suicide bombing and the politics of populism. Mark co-directs the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics at the University of Brighton.

  • Presentation title: Querying the People: Queering the Demos

Emre Erdoğan, Associate Professor, Dept. of International Relations, Istanbul Bilgi University

  • Emre Erdoğan graduated from the Political Science Department of Boğaziçi University, where he also completed his MA and PhD. He has been working in the public opinion and marketing research sector since 1996 and became one of the founders of the Infakto RW (2003). He is an expert on quantitative techniques and political methodology and the author of numerous papers about foreign policy and public opinion, political participation, volunteerism, and social capital. He has conducted various research projects on Europeanization and European perceptions of Turkey, othering and empathy, polarization, populism, and seasonal agricultural workers. Currently, he is an associate professor teaching social statistics and research method course at Istanbul Bilgi University, maintaining his position as the head of the department.

Pınar Uyan Semerci, Professor, Dept. of International Relations, Istanbul Bilgi University

  • Pinar Uyan Semerci is the director of the Centre for Migration Research and the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Istanbul Bilgi University. Her research interests lie at the crossroads between political philosophy, political economy, social policy and methodology in which she focuses on topics relating to universalism, justice, human development, capability approach, poverty, migration; collective identity formation, othering, polarization, populism, and well-being of vulnerable groups, particularly children. She has coordinated numerous research projects and published mainly on capability approach, migration, anti-immigrant attitude, othering, polarization, and child labour and child well-being in Turkey.
  • Tentative presentation title (to be delivered with Emre Erdoğan): Discussing the role of emotions in the polarized populist politics of Turkey: Fear, Anger and Love

Tuija Saresma, PhD, Senior Researcher at the Research Centre for Contemporary Culture, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
  • Tuija Saresma, Adjunct Professor of Cultural Studies and Gender Studies, is a senior researcher at the Research Centre for Contemporary Culture, Department of Music, Art and Culture Research, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.She has published widely on populism, hate speech and social media as well as performativity and intersectionality. Currently she works in or leads multidisciplinary research projects on mainstreaming populism (Academy of Finland); intersections of mobility (Kone Foundation); belonging and displacement (Academy of Finland); and hate speech (Prime Minister’s Office).
  • Tentative presentation title: Populism in the Digital Era: Affect, Othering, and Intersectionality

Niko Hatakka, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Parliamentary Studies, University of Turku
  • Niko Hatakka is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Parliamentary studies at the University of Turku. In his past work, Hatakka has used a discourse theoretical approach to analyze how the hybridization of the media system has affected populism as a logic of political articulation, and how we should take this into consideration when researching populism as a political communication phenomenon. His work highlights the interconnection between populism – as a logic of articulating a chain of equivalence – and the hybrid media environment in which populist communication is being performed, shaped and reacted to by multiple actors with various agendas. Currently Hatakka is researching the mainstreaming of populist logic outside of party systems and the significations given to populism as a phenomenon by journalists in the past two decades. Next year Hatakka will start as Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham, working on populist radical right party organizations and their relationship with party activists.
  • Presentation title: Populism in the Hybrid Media System