The Fifth Helsinki Conference on Emotions, Populism, and Polarisation took place at the University of Helsinki on March 4-7, 2025. This was our biggest event yet: we were thrilled to welcome 212 participants from 42 countries and every continent except Australia and Antarctica. These participants presented and chaired 65 panels on an exciting and fresh range of topics at the intersection of political science and media research.
We continued the hybrid conference tradition that we started in 2022 with HEPP3, allowing 73 participants to remotely join the 139 in-person attendees. Despite the technical difficulties that this sometimes entails – which we continually worked to smooth over, with the help of our fantastic BA and MA student assistants and the constructive feedback from our participants – we believe that keeping HEPP accessible for participants who cannot fund a trip to Helsinki is essential. This is in line with our commitment to open science and to providing more opportunities for academics from the Global South to take part in the international conversation around our key topics of focus. It also gives our participants the opportunity to hear from perspectives and about cases that otherwise would not show up on the program.
The conference began with a kickoff event at Think Corner, where Emilia Palonen, the leader of HEPP, chaired a discussion with the CO3 Horizon project team about the Social Contract and Populism in Contemporary Politics. This really set the stage for the rest of the conference to unfold, as the social contract – CO3's main focus – was also the guiding theoretical theme for HEPP5, with CO3 also contributing to the funding of this year’s event.
We were very proud to welcome three fantastic keynote speakers to HEPP5. Allan Dreyer Hansen of Roskilde University in Denmark got the ball rolling with a fantastic discussion of populism theory on Wednesday 5 March. If you missed it, you can watch Allan’s speech on our YouTube channel. On Thursday, Asel Doolotkeldieva gave us a window into Central Asian politics in her speech on radical politics against authoritarian and semi-authoritarian social contracts. Participants particularly enjoyed hearing about a region that international research often ignores. Finally, Marina Prentoulis helped us close the conference proceedings on Friday, with her rousing talk at the Think Corner on neoliberalism and the annihilation of the social contract. You can also watch Marina’s talk on YouTube. We are thankful to the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV) for funding for the keynotes.
Organizing the fifth HEPP conference was a collective effort by the research group. The conference secretary, Ilana Hartikainen, was already a participant in the first HEPP conference in 2019, and this time she lead the work for the conference as its secretary while preparing for her PhD defense in June. Help from Laura Horsmanheimo and Olena Siden, doctoral students at HEPP, and Henry Jokinen, our long-term research assistant, was invaluable. The academic leads Szilvia Horváth from CO3 and Kleber Carrilho from our Trans-Atlantic Partnership consortium project on pandemic resilience ENDURE contributed to the academic framing and leadership. HEPP thanks all of them plus the organising committee members, chairs of the panels and keynote sessions, and conference assistants, and of course all of the presenters for their contributions.
With HEPP5 behind us, we are now working on collecting contributions for our Working Paper Series, which will feature an issue on the conference proceedings.
We also already have our sights set on HEPP6, which will take place in May 2026, once again at the University of Helsinki. This time, our main conference funder and organiser will be the Pledge Horizon Europe research consortium, which investigates the politics of grievance and democratic governance. Keep an eye out for our CfP later this year!
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