People

is one of the three Programme Directors in Datafication at the Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities. She leads the , with many projects and researchers. Palonen’s work is in between politics and communication studies. She on leave from her position as Senior University Lecturer in Political Science, University of Helsinki, but she did all her academic degrees in the UK, including an MA and a PhD in Ideology and Discourse Analysis at the University of Essex. This is the interpretive approach she has taught for almost twenty years to the students of political science at Helsinki. 

Most recently, Palonen has been working on large and smaller sets of social media data Twitter for the analysis of the pandemic () and the EP2024 elections. An edited volume with came out in spring 2024 on Palgrave. With she published an article in Visual Studies operationalising her formula of populism to a comparative study of the Finnish far right on the YouTube. The formula of populism was first conceptualised in t, and later developed with Marina Vulovic in. Palonen's work has been dealing with illiberalism and the entanglement of populism and nationalism Hungary. She was reading the warning signs of already in mid-2000s in Hungary. And she writes the Finland chapter in the . 

Palonen is in the leadership of the horizon projects CO3 for the Social Contract and PLEDGE for Emotional politics funded for 2024-2027. She also has been leading Cluster 4 in the Academy of Finland and other Trans-Atlantic Partnership consortium funders' ENDURE project exploring resilience in crisis (2022-2025). These consortia engaged in a study of EP 2024 elections from a multimodal perspective.  Palonen is an engaged scholar in media and associations: She is an Executive Committee member in  the International Political Science Association (IPSA). She is a vice chair of the Finnish Federation of Learned Societies (2023-2024), and serves in the National Coordination of Open Science in Finland and the Committee on Human Rights at the Council of Finnish Academies. She co-chairs the first ever general track on Populism and Polarisation in the International Political Science Association’s World Congress in Seoul South Korea in July 2025.

(PhD) is Associate Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Helsinki. Herkman has studied, among others, the relationship between populism and media, and he has published extensively on the topic in academic articles. Herkman is an author of a book A Cultural Approach to Populism (2022, Routledge) and a co-editor of Populism, Twitter and the European Public Sphere (2024, Palgrave) together with Emilia Palonen. 

He has worked as a visiting scholar at the Universities of Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Oslo, and, besides the Nordic countries, his large research networks contain especially the European academic field. Herkman worked as a young scholar in the European Science Foundation’s research programme Changing Media, Changing Europe in 2002-2004 and as a visiting fellow at Freie Universität Berlin in 2021-2022. Currently he is research partner in a project Polarization, Affect, Identity, run by Liv Sunnercrantz at the University of Stavanger. Herkman directs the project (POHU) funded by the Kone Foundation (2022-2024). 
 

Recent publications: 

• Herkman, J. & Hatakka, N. (2024) Meanings of populism and the radical right in Finnish and Swedish media. In A-C. Jungar (ed.) The Nordic Populist Radical Right: Voters, Ideology, and Political Interactions. Routledge.  
   
• Herkman, J. & Koivukoski, J. (2024) Humour scandals in the Finnish political public sphere 1990-2020. The European Journal of Humour Research 12(1): 73-100. ;
   
• Herkman, J. & Palonen, E. (eds.) (2024). Populism, Twitter and the European Public Sphere: Social Media Communication in the EP 2019 Elections. Palgrave. ;
   
• Herkman, J. (2022). A Cultural Approach to Populism (1st ed.). Routledge.  
   
• Hatakka, N. & Herkman, J. (2022) Hegemonic meanings of populism: Populism as signifier in legacy dailies of six countries 2000-2018. Media, Culture & Society 44(8): 1523-1540.  
• Herkman, J., & Jungar, A-C. (2021). Populism and media and communication studies in the Nordic countries. In E. Skogerbø, Ø. Ihlen, N. N. Kristensen, & L. Nord (Eds.), Power, Communication, and Politics in the Nordic Countries (pp. 241-261). NORDICOM.  

Alexander Alekseev is a doctoral researcher in political science. Before joining the University of Helsinki, he completed the doctoral programme in political science at the Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow. He also holds a Master’s degree in Human Rights and Humanitarian Action from the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po Paris) and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO-University).

His doctoral dissertation deals with political discourses of populist radical right parties in the European Union. By focusing on the cases of the French National Rally and Polish Law and Justice, Alexander examines how populist radical right parties in government and in opposition engage in a symbolic struggle over the meanings of key political concepts, including democracy, sovereignty, and freedom(s). His interests encompass right-wing politics, ideologies, and discourses, political theory and history of political concepts, as well as semiotics and the methodology of the social sciences.

Before engaging in academic work in Finland, Alexander gained extensive experience in the field of human rights in Russia, taught in different positions at the HSE, and worked on various projects at the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences (INION RAN).

Recent publications:

• Alekseev, A. (2024). The (changing) concept of democracy in (transforming) European populist radical right discourses: the case of Polish Law and Justice. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 1–21. 
   
• Alekseev, A. (2023). Sovereignty in Political Discourses of the European Populist Radical Right: The Right of the People and the Right of the Peoples. In J. Rone, N. Brack, R. Coman, & A. Crespy (Eds.), Sovereignty in Conflict: Political, Constitutional and Economic Dilemmas in the EU (pp. 211–243). Palgrave Macmillan. 
   
• Alekseev, A. (2022). “It is in the nation-state that democracy resides”: How the populist radical right discursively manipulates the concept of democracy in the EU parliamentary elections. Journal of Language and Politics, 21(3), 459–483. 
   
• Alekseev, A. (2021). “Defend your right!” How the populist radical right uses references to rights and freedoms to discursively construct identities. New Perspectives, 29(4), 376–416.  

, an affiliated researcher to HEPP, currently works in the Horizon research consortium 'Analysis and Responses to Extremist Narratives' (). 

She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Eastern Finland (2007). Trained as a sociologist, her work is interdisciplinary and encompasses such fields as media studies, political science and social psychology. Her main research interests focus on right-wing populism, far-right, extremist narratives, anti-immigration movements, conspiracies, hybrid media and post-truth politics. She has been teaching at the university since 2016 on topics related to ethnic relations and nationalism, and more specifically on populism, such as the course. 

Gwenaëlle Bauvois has been involved in several research projects, in Finland and on the European level: (2019-2022), (2010-2022), (2019-2019) and (2016-2019), and (2019-2022). 

Selected publications:

Bauvois, G, & Pyrhönen, N (2024), Kansainvälisen muuttoliikkeen kriisit ja kriisikeskustelut: Poliittisten vaikuttajien muuttuva rooli maahanmuutto- ja kotoutumiskeskustelussa. In T. A. Renvik, & M. Säävälä (Eds.), Kotoutumisen kokonaiskatsaus 2023 Työ- ja elinkeinoministeriö 

Bauvois, G, Pyrhönen, N & Pyysiäinen, J (2022), Underdogs Shepherding the Flock—Discursive Outgrouping of the Internal Enemy in Action. In Pettersson, K. & Nortio. E., The Far-Right Discourse of Multiculturalism in Intergroup Interactions: A Critical Discursive Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan. 

Kazlauskaitė, R, Pyrhönen, N & Bauvois, G (2022), Mediating shame and pride: countermedia coverage of Independence Day in Poland and the US, Emotions and Society. 

Pyrhönen, N, Bauvois, G & Rosenström, S (2021), Soldiers of Odin as Peril or Protection? Hybrid Mediatization of Oppositional Framings on Anti-Immigration Responses to the ‘Refugee Crisis’. Nordiques. 

is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, working at the Helsinki Hub of Emotions, Populism, and Polarisation as a member of the Endure Transatlantic project, funded by the Research Council of Finland. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Social Sciences (2000) from the Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, and a Master's Degree (2005) and PhD (2010) in Media and Communication.

Kleber researches polarised discourses in political spaces and social media, particularly in Brazil. His broader research interests include political communication, populism, ideology, and the construction of political identity through discourse.

Before joining the University of Helsinki, he worked in different Universities and had teaching and leading roles, with over 20 years of experience in Brazil and Portugal. His expertise in political communication, populism and electoral strategies has made him a frequent media commentator and newspaper contributor.

Most recent publications:

• Carrilho, K., Koljonen, J., & Palonen, E. (2024). Covid-19, comunicação governamental e redes sociais: As experiências da Finlândia e do Brasil [Covid-19, government communication, and social networks: The experiences of Finland and Brazil]. Organicom. Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil. (To be published in the next issue)

• Carrilho, K., Horsmanheimo, L., & Linnamäki, K. (2024). Introduction: Reflections on emotions, populism, and polarisation. In Reflections on emotions, populism and polarisation. University of Helsinki. 

• Carrilho, K., Fontolan, M., Gomes da Silva Hernandes, E., & Silva, G. (2024). Polarisation and disinformation in Brazil's COVID-19 vaccination onset on X (former Twitter). In Reflections on emotions, populism and polarisation. University of Helsinki. 

• Carrilho, K., Horsmanheimo, L., & Linnamäki, K. (Eds.). (2024). Reflections on emotions, populism, and polarisation: HEPP4 conference proceedings. University of Helsinki.

Orcid:

LinkedIn:

is a doctoral researcher in the Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal, and Regional Changes, dedicated to unraveling the intricate links between public spaces, migration dynamics, and identity development. Drawing on her multifaceted background built between Brazil and Finland, Eurídice engages in cutting-edge explorations of urban design to foster social mixing and combat prejudice, leveraging her early proficiency in public management and legal studies. Her research agenda focuses on cultural public spaces and the dynamics of identity development in mixed-background individuals, a topic directly connected to her activist work at Ninho ry. At HEPP, Eurídice was a research assistant for the Finnish team in the D.Rad project, researching the urban aspects of deradicalization. She also has experience working as a public policy intern in Buenos Aires City Hall and as an urban researcher at CEPESP, a public policy center in São Paulo.

Recent publications: 

• Hernández, E., (2023). “The library experience goes far beyond books”: narratives of belonging of Spanish and Portuguese-speaking women migrants in Helsinki public libraries. University of Helsinki, p. 80. (G2 Master’s thesis). Available at:
• Kuokkanen, K. , Hernández Gomes, E. , Sarla, JJ & Palonen, E. (2023) Spatial aspects of de-radicalisation processes in Helsinki: D9.1 City Report, D.Rad – research report. Available at:
• Scabin, F.(org) (2020). Parâmetros para a consulta e para o respeito dos direitos de povos indígenas e comunidades tradicionais atingidas por empreendimentos de infraestrutura. São Paulo: FGV Direito SP - CeDHE - Relatórios Técnicos. URI 
• Gomes da Silva Hernandes, E., E. Souza Siqueira, E. Henrique Diniz, M. Pozzebon (2018) ‘A digital community bank: mapping negotiation mechanisms in its consolidation as an alternative to commercial banks’ International Journal of Community Currency Research 2018 Volume 22 (Summer) 56-70 <www.ijccr.net&gt; ISSN 1325-9547. f

Ilana Hartikainen is a researcher & project planner in Political Science. She defended her dissertation, entitled Populist contestations of Liberal Democracy as an Element of the Mnemonic Hegemony in Czechia and Slovakia, in June 2025. She holds a BA from Northwestern University in English and Slavic Studies and an Erasmus Mundus double masters from the University of Glasgow and Corvinus University of Budapest in Russian, Central, and East European Studies and Political Science. She received PhD funding from the Kone Foundation as a part of the Now-Time, Us Space: Hegemonic Mobilizations in Central and Eastern Europe (2020-2022) and Media, migration, and conspiracy theories in Central Eastern Europe: Discourses and infrastructures (2023) projects, and from the Ehrnrooth Foundation (2022 & 2024). Her research interests include populist memory politics, the mnemonic basis of liberal democracy, conspiracy theories, and pseudohistory in politics. She is also part of the Banana Populism team, which applies a discourse theoretical approach to the funnier elements of populist politics.  

Before starting her PhD, she worked as a journalist and as a member of the Department of Education at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes in Prague (2014-2022). Her work there focused on developing innovative teaching materials for international history education, and she consistently attempts to import this experience into her pedagogical practice in Helsinki.

Recent publications

Szebeni, Z., Hartikainen, I., Schmalenberger, S., & Cole, M. (2025). Banana Populism: Exploring the Emotionally Engaging, Authentic, and Memeable Rhetoric of Populist Visual Communication. Social Media + Society, 11(1), 20563051251313847.

Hartikainen, I., Syrovátka, J., & Szebeni, Z. (2024). Blurring Histories: King Svätopluk I and the Shaping of Slovak Identity through Pseudohistory and Slow Memory. Slovenský Národopis / Slovak Ethnology, 72(4), 536–549.

Hartikainen, I., & Szebeni, Z. (2024). Exclusively Our People: Defining Tribalism through the Slovak Case. East European Politics and Societies, 38(1), 73–96.

Hartikainen, I. (2023). Wait, who were the collaborators? Rhetorical moves and online memory practices of the Czech far-right. In A. Kotljarchuk & F. Zavatti (Eds.), On the Digital Front-Line: Far-Right Memory Work in the Baltic, Central and East European Online Spaces. Opuscula historica Upsaliensia.

Polynczuk-Alenius, K., & Hartikainen, I. (2022). Disentangling time-spaces of migration: Chronotopes and racist subjectivities in ‘identity journalism’ in Poland and Czechia. Journalism.

Laura Horsmanheimo is a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. She completed bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Politics and Communication at the University of Helsinki. She is writing her PhD thesis on sex workers’ inclusion and self-representation in public space in the Gender, Culture and Society programme. Her research interests cover feminist theory, citizenship, marginalisation, and participatory (art-based) methods.

Horsmanheimo has been working in New Administrative Language and Citizens project funded by the Kone Foundation as a Grant-funded researcher in 2024, and in the D.Rad Horizon project funded by the European Commission as a research assistant in 2021-2023.

Recent publications:

Hormanheimo, L., Carrilho, K., Linnamäki, K. (eds.). (2024). Reflections on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation: HEPP4 Conference Proceedings, The Working Paper Series on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation 3(1). .

Hormanheimo, L., Carrilho, K., Linnamäki, K. (2024). Introduction. Kokoelmassa Hormanheimo, L., Carrilho, K., Linnamäki, K. (toim.) Reflections on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation: HEPP4 Conference Proceedings. The Working Paper Series on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation 3(1). .

Palonen, E., Kuokkanen, K., Horsmanheimo, L., Haselbacher, M. & Reeger, U. (2024). Spatial aspects of de-radicalisation processes. D.9.2 Synthesis Report (raportti). D.Rad. .

Salojärvi, V., Palonen, E., Horsmanheimo, L. & Kylli, R-M. (2023). Protecting the Future ‘Us’: A Rhetoric-performative Audio-visual Analysis of the Polarising Far-right YouTube Campaign Videos in Finland, Visual Studies. .

Kuokkanen, K., Horsmanheimo, L. & Palonen, E. (2023). Conceptualising Finnish deradicalisation policies: Implicit or explicit, projectified or institutionalised? DPCE Online. [Online] 59(2). 

Horsmanheimo, L., Lounela, E., Kylli, R-M. & Palonen, E. (2023). Mainstreaming, Gender and Communication in Finland (raportti). D.Rad. .

Horsmanheimo, L. (2023). ”Prostituutio ei ole vain yksilöiden välinen asia vaan sillä on vaikutuksia koko yhteiskuntaan”: Retoris-performatiivinen diskurssianalyysi seksinoston kriminalisointiin kytkeytyvien merkitysten tuottamisesta (maisterin tutkielma). Helsingin yliopisto, Helsinki. .

Trained as a political scientist at the University of Helsinki, Finland, Rūta Kazlauskaitė is an interdisciplinary scholar, working at the intersection of media and communication studies, memory studies, and political psychology. Her research examines perceptual engineering and memory politics in immersive digital storyworlds (VR/AR/MR). Rūta's work has been featured in prominent academic journals across disciplines, including Rethinking History, Memory, Mind & Media, International Journal of Heritage Studies, Journal of the Philosophy of History, Emotions and Society, and Ethnicities.

Rūta is currently working in the “Politics of Grievance and Democratic Governance” (PLEDGE) Horizon Europe project, in which she examines the role of immersive virtual reality content in shaping anti-/pro-democratic expressions of grievances. She will also produce future scenarios regarding the opportunities and threats immersive virtual experiences pose for democracies, focusing on affective polarization as well as perceptual and emotional engineering.

Previously, Rūta was a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Media at Aalto University and a member of the Systems of Representation research group. Her project examined politics of truth and empathy in virtual reality history education. Her work explored what new forms of historical knowledge immersive digital media produce, what effects these media hold for students’ understanding of contested pasts, and how they shape the dynamic of engagement and detachment in historical understanding. She is also a member of the Virtual Cinema Lab at Aalto University.

Rūta has also worked in two postdoctoral projects, in which she focused on the emotions of shame and pride as resources of political right-wing mobilization. In an Academy of Finland-funded project "Whirl of Knowledge: Cultural Populism in European Polarised Politics and Societies (WhiKnow)" she examined affective polarization in public debates during the run-up to the 2019 Polish parliamentary elections as well as the 2019 European Parliament elections. In a project funded by the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation "Mobilizing the Disenfranchised: Post-Truth Public Stories in Finland, France, and the United States” she studied the rhetoric of shame and pride in right-wing online media outlets in the US and Poland.

Rūta's PhD project (2018) "Towards an Embodied History: Metaphorical Models in Textbook Knowledge of the Controversial Polish-Lithuanian Past" demonstrates how metaphors shape human understanding of the past and lived experience; and how they can create or diminish a potential of openness to a different narrative of experience. Abstract and full text available here:

Recent publications:

Kazlauskaitė, R. Accepted/In production. “Pictures in Our Heads: Politics of Space, Time, and Memory in Polish Virtual Reality Storyworlds.” Memory Studies. 

Kazlauskaitė, R. 2023. “Virtual reality as a technology of memory: Immersive presence in Polish politics of memory.” Memory, Mind & Media, 2, e7. doi:  

Kazlauskaitė, R. 2022. “Embodying ressentimentful victimhood: virtual reality re-enactment of the Warsaw uprising in the Second World War Museum in Gdańsk.” International Journal of Heritage Studies, 28(6), 699-713. doi:  

Kazlauskaitė, R. 2022. “KNOWING IS SEEING: Distance and Proximity in Affective Virtual Reality History.” Rethinking History, 26(1): 51-70. doi:  

Kazlauskaitė, R., and M. Salmela. 2022. “Mediated Emotions: Shame and Pride in Polish Right-wing Media Coverage of the 2019 European Parliament Elections.” Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 35(1): 130-149. doi:

Kazlauskaitė, R., Pyrhönen, N., and G. Bauvois. 2022. “Shame, Pride and the Mediated Emotional Regime: Countermedia Coverage of the Independence Day in Poland and the US during the Populist Breakthrough.” Emotions and Society, 4(2), 199-221. doi: 

Virtual reality as a technology of memory: Immersive presence in Polish politics of memory | Memory, Mind & Media | Cambridge Core

Virtual reality as a technology of memory: Immersive presence in Polish politics of memory - Volume 2

works as a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, in the faculty of Social Sciences. She has a background in Gender Studies (University of Vienna) and Philology (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest). Her research interests are right-wing populism and gender politics in Hungary, feminist activities, and possible ways of emancipation and resistance. Her doctoral thesis is organized around the concept of hegemony and the question of what role gender and familialism plays in hegemony building and how nationalism, populism, and gender are related.

During her PhD, she has been working with HEPP in cooperation with the Academy of Finland-funded research project Whirl of Knowledge. Cultural Populism in European Polarised Politics and Societies on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on hegemonic articulations, and in the project Now-Time, Us Space: Hegemonic Mobilizations in Central and Eastern Europe, focusing on the role of football and stadiums in “illiberal” identity building. in Hungary, researching spatial and temporal dimensions of populist articulations.

Recent publications:

· Linnamäki, K. Ideological familism in the Hungarian government’s discourses around the borders of the “nation” [forthcoming].

· Linnamäki, K. & Vuolteenaho, J. “Us”-building through sports in contemporary Hungary: National-historical narrativization in and through the Ferenc Puskás Football Academy and its Arena Pancho [forthcoming].

· Linnamäki, K. (2022). Not in Front of the Child: Hungarian Illiberalism and the “Child Protective Law”. Politics and Governance. 10 (4) 16-25.

· Linnamäki, K. (2021). Gendered Articulations of Control and Care on Social Media During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Hungary. Front. Polit. Sci.

· Linnamäki, K. (2021). Signifying illiberalism: Gender and Sport in Viktor Orbán´s Facebook Photos.In: Hakola, O. et al. (eds.): Culture and Politics of Populist Masculinities, Lexington Books, 29-49.

Emilia Lounela is a doctoral researcher in political history. Her BSSc and MSSc from the University of Helsinki include studies in social and economic history, social and cultural anthropology, and communications. In her doctoral dissertation, supervised by Emilia Palonen, she examines incel (”involuntary celibacy”) online communities. She studies the ideals and identities constructed and negotiated in incel online discussions. In addition to this, using interview data, she studies experiences leading to involvement in, and disengagement from, these communities.

Recent publications:

Meriläinen, M., Arjoranta, J., & Lounela, E. (2023). Syrjityt soijapojat ja pilattu pelaaminen: Maskuliinisuus ja antifeminismi Ylilaudan
pelikulttuurikeskusteluissa. Sukupuolentutkimus-Genusforskning, 36(3–4).

Lounela, E. & Murphy, S. (2023). Incel Violence and Victimhood: Negotiating inceldom in online discussions of the Plymouth shooting. Terrorism
and Political Violence. 36(3), 344–365.

Dayei Oh is a postdoctoral researcher at the Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Helsinki. She holds a BA in Psychology from Ewha Womans University (South Korea), an MA in Media and Communications from the University of Nottingham (UK), and a PhD in Social Sciences from Loughborough University, funded by the Online Civic Culture Centre (UK). At Loughborough, her doctoral thesis explored incivility and intolerance in online political discourse and its implications for deliberative democracy.

For the Datafication of Society Initiatives (2022-2025), Dayei is investigating online epistemic populism: how epistemic communities construct and share alternative knowledge structures in a digital age. Her broader research interests include the intersection of digital technologies (social media/AI), public spheres, and political communications (politics of speech, political speech). Dayei is interested in mixed-methods research designs including computational social science methods.

Before joining Helsinki, Dayei has worked as a research assistant/associate at Loughborough University, and also worked as a news assistant at the Associated Press South Korean bureau.

Recent open access publications:

• Oh, D. & Downey, J. (2024). Does algorithmic content moderation promote democratic discourse? Radical democratic critique of toxic language AI. Information, Communication & Society.
   
• Oh, D. & Castren, O. (2024). 'The UK: Brexit and Competing Populism' in Herkman, J. & Palonen, E. (Eds). Populism, Twitter and European Public Sphere: Social Media Communication in the EP 2019 Elections. Palgrave Macmillan. Open Access:
   
• Oh, D., Elayan, S., & Sykora, M. (2023). Deliberative Qualities of Online Abortion Discourse: Incivility and Intolerance in the American and Irish Abortion Discussions on Twitter. Journal of Deliberative Democracy, 19(1), 1–12. DOI:
   
• Oh, D., Elayan, S., Sykora, M., & Downey, J. (2021). Unpacking uncivil society: Incivility and intolerance in the 2018 Irish abortion referendum discussions on Twitter. Nordicom Review, 42(s1), 103-118. DOI:

is an Assistant Professor in the School of Marketing and Communication at the University of Vaasa and affiliated with the Helsinki Hub on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation at the University of Helsinki. She is a work package leader in the Academy of Finland -funded project Whirl of Knowledge: Cultural Populism in European Polarised Politics and Societies (2019-2022, PI Emilia Palonen) and a senior researcher in ENDURE: Inequalities, Community Resilience and New Governance Modalities in a Post-Pandemic World (2022-2025, PI Mihai Varga, Freie Universität Berlin). She also participates in a Helsingin Sanomat Foundation funded project Short videos as young people’s news source (2022-2024, PI Tanja Sihvonen, University of Vaasa), and previously in Mainstreaming Populism in the 21st century (2017-2021, PI Juha Herkman). Her main research interests include polarisation and conflict, populism and media, emotions, (audio-)visual analysis and Latin American studies.  

Salojärvi is a Chair in IAMCR's (International Association for Media and Communication Research) Crisis, Security and Conflict Communication Working Group. She has frequently visited the Universities of Miami and Valencia as a visiting scholar. 

Her previous and current teaching include courses on media theory, social media research, media and society, populism and media, and Master’s seminar, in addition to guest lecturing on populism, freedom of expression, and visual analysis. Moreover, she supervises PhD candidates and Master’s thesis. 

Recent publications: 

• Salojärvi, V. 2022. Faceless government: civic action in media photographs during the Venezuelan anti-governmental protests of 2017. Visual Communication 21(1), 53–72. DOI: 
• Salojärvi, V., & Jensen, R. B. (special issue eds) 2021. Active agency, access and power. Media, War & Conflict 14(3).  
• Salojärvi, V. 2020. Populistiset miesjohtajat ja performatiivisuus: Timo Soinin, Hugo Chávezin ja Donald J. Trumpin hahmot journalistisissa kuvissa (Populist male leaders and performativity: The characters of Timo Soini, Hugo Chávez and Donald J. Trump in journalistic photographs). Media ja Viestintä, 43(4), 366-384. 
• García Santamaría, S. & Salojärvi V. 2020. Media in Authoritarian Contexts. A Logics Approach to Journalistic Professional Resistance in Cuba and Venezuela. In X. Orchard et al. (eds) Media & Governance in Latin America: Towards Plurality of Voices. New York: Peter Lang. 

Olena Siden is a doctoral researcher in political science at the University of Helsinki. She is a recipient of the fellowship from April 2025 - March 2027, which will support her dissertation research during that time. 

Olena explores the discursive construction of war in French political discourse, focusing on the case of the Russo-Ukrainian war. The research examines how French politicians (Valérie Pécresse, Éric Zemmour, Marine Le Pen, Emmanuel Macron, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon) utilized the Russo-Ukrainian war within their Twitter discourse during the 2022 French Presidential Elections. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, the study investigates manipulation strategies, social actor construction, and rhetorical tropes. This research combines linguistics, social sciences, and political studies, contributing to a deeper understanding of digital media's role in political discourse. 

Recent publications:

• Siden, O. (2024). “Vicious Circle” of War: Metaphorization of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine in Éric Zemmour’s Twitter Communication. Studia Philologica, 22(1), 175–192.  
   
• Siden, O. (2023). Twitter communication of French politicians as a reaction to Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine (based on the accounts of Valérie Pécresse, Éric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen). New Philology, (90), 99-115.  

Doctoral researcher Viljami Vaarala studies the conceptions of knowledge and truth among news professionals and the epistemic contestations taking place in the emerging Finnish right-wing podcasting sphere. His doctoral thesis handles the discursive processes of political meaning making through the lens of metajournalistic discourse through which journalism's authority is being both defended and criticized. Vaarala's overall interest focuses on the questions regarding journalism's epistemology, metajournalistic discourses, and ideology of journalism.

Vaarala works at the Swedish School of Social Science and is a board member of the research community and association Rajapinta ry focusing on digital social sciences. He is also a member of the editorial team of the Finnish academic journal Media & Viestintä.

Recent publications 

Ruotsalainen, J., Vaarala, V. E., Hujanen, J., Grönlund, M., & Lehtisaari, K. (2024). A servant of the authorities or an ally of civil society? The role perceptions and role performance of local interloper media. The role perceptions and role performance of Finnish interloper media. Journalism studies. 

Hujanen, J., Ruotsalainen, J., Vaarala, V., Lehtisaari, K., & Gronlund, M. (2023). Performing journalism: Making sense of ethical practice within local interloper media. Journalism, 24(12), 2668-2686. 

is a postdoctoral researcher in the Datafication Research Program at Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH). She comes from an interdisciplinary background with her Bachelor's in Economics, Master's in International Relations, and PhD in Cultural Studies within the framework of Inter-Asia Studies. Her broad research interests include contemporary political theories, media studies, the study of violence, discourse theory, and the intersection of populism(s) and nationalism. Her doctoral research analyzed the violence of lynching and the crisis of democracy in India. Her research at HSSH will explore the contested epistemic communities and authorities vis-à-vis the datafication of the society. 

Recent Publications: 

• Vasudeva, F., & Barkdull, N. (2022). "Narratives of Misinformation: Comparative Histories of U.S. and Indian Lynchings," Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, Vol XXII, No. 1, 60-72. 
• Vasudeva, F., & Barkdull, N. (2020). "WhatsApp in India? A Case Study of Social Media-Related Lynchings," Social Identities, Vol.26, No. 5, 574-589.  

is a PhD researcher in sociology at the University of Helsinki. Resting on a cultural understanding of globalization processes, his research revolves around the dialectics of globalization and humor. He has a background in semiotics where he did research on semiocide (destruction of socio-culturally meaningful signs) in political processes. He is currently a member of the research project "" funded by Kone Foundation (2022-2024). In line with the work packages of the project, his contribution involves doing research on the political humor scandals in the Estonian public sphere in the past three decades. His recent publications touch upon topics such as semiocide, space-time relationship and semiotics of visual arts. Along with his academic career, Erfan sporadically writes as a journalist and leads projects regarding educational material development.

Recent publications: 

• Fatehi, E. (2021). ', 8: 38 - 49. 
• Fatehi, E. (2021). 'Signification of the Uncanny: Frida Kahlo's Surreal Paintings against the Background of Semiotic Codes' in Eikon: Journal on Semiotics and Culture, 9: 20 - 35. DOI: 
• Fatehi, E. (2019). 'Mass and Societal Alination in Kafka's the Castle: A Construal Based on Tonnies, Seeman and Freud' in Dilemas Contemporáneos: Educación, Política y Valores, 7: 1 - 13. DOI: 

is a postdoctoral researcher at the Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Helsinki. She holds BA and MA in computer engineering (software) (Iran); She was a research assistant for four months (South Korea), and she did her PhD in computer science (Italy). 

The projects in which she was involved are as follows: 

• Clustering the social networks based on modularity optimization on three datasets, including Karate Club, Dolphins and Jazz. 
• Developing methods for predicting mergers and acquisitions based on the network structure of the Japanese automotive industry. 
• Modelling the connection between educational attainment and food purchases (in London) by applying spatial econometric tools. 
• Analyzing food consumption of Londoners through social media to investigate if digital data can be an appropriate representative of real data. 
• Characterizing the cultural aspects of countries through Wiki Loves Monuments image dataset and providing quantitative evidence of a link between the visual representation of a country’s cultural heritage and the set of social, political, religious, and cultural values through a world value survey research program. 

Her research effort is related to computational social science, which involves the application of computational methods and data-intensive machine learning tasks to solve societal issues at scale like health, poverty, education, sustainability, ageing, etc. Her primary focus at HSSH will be on developing computational indicators and analysis methods that can be used to study the datafication of society and, in particular, contested epistemies and epistemic communities in online environments. 



Recent publications:

• Azizifard. N, Gelauff. L, Gransard-Desmond. J, Redi. M and Schifanella. R, “Wiki Loves Monuments: crowdsourcing the collective image of the worldwide built heritage”, JOCCH (Accepted), 2022. 
• Azizi Fard, N., De Francisci Morales, G., Mejova, Y. et al. On the interplay between educational attainment and nutrition: a spatially-aware perspective. EPJ Data Sci. 10, 18 (2021). 

is a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, Media and Communication Studies. Koivukoski's dissertation, currently in review, deals with political humor in the hybrid media environment. In his research, Koivukoski examines hybrids of satire and journalism and amusing online advocacy. 

Koivukoski has been involved with Whirl of Knowledge, and he currently works in a research project Political Humor in Power Struggles of Democracy. Koivukoski will be working in Humor Scandals, a project that investigates humor controversies in six European countries, inspired by a previous UnaEuropa collaboration on Humor in the European Public Sphere. Koivukoski has previously been a visiting Fulbright scholar at the Klein College of Media and Communication, Temple University. 

Recent publications: 

• Laaksonen, S-M., Koivukoski, J. & Porttikivi, M. (2021). Rhetorical strategies and communicative outcomes of a political parody performance by Loldiers of Odin. new media & society. 
• Koivukoski, J., & Ödmark, S. (2020). Producing Journalistic News Satire: How Nordic Satirists Negotiate a Hybrid Genre. Journalism studies.
• Koivukoski, J. (2019). Journalistinen uutissatiiri hybridinä genrenä: Noin viikon uutisten ja Uutisraportin tekijöiden itseymmärrys ja käsitteellinen rajatyö. Media & viestintä.
• Koivukoski, J. A., & Zareff, J. (2018). Scatological Anecdotes, Heavy Drinking, and Backpacker Culture: Gonzo humor and Edgework in Contemporary Finnish Journalism. In R. Alexander, & C. Isager (Eds.), Fear and Loathing Worldwide: Gonzo Journalism Beyond Hunter S. Thompson [12] T & T Clark.

Stavroula Koskina is a research assistant currently engaged in the POPREU project and an external fellow at HEPP. Born and raised in Thessaloniki, Stavroula is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She holds a Master’s Degree in Political Theory and a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology and is also an undergraduate student in Islamic Studies at the same institution. Stavroula has further enriched her research experience as a research assistant at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, Turkey, and as a research fellow at the Democracy Institute of the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, Hungary. Her primary research interests include the intersection of religion and politics, with a focus on Turkey and the wider MENA region.

, D.Soc.Sc., is a Docent of Communication and a University Researcher in the Centre for Consumer Society Research, University of Helsinki. Her research connects broadly to the fields of digital communication studies, technology studies, and organization studies. Her current work investigates the use of data, algorithms, and automation in organizations, as well as the logics of the hybrid media system in consumer-business relationships. She is currently leading a research project that studies the influence of Unconventional Communicators in the Corona Crisis. Her previous projects have focused on, for example, organizational reputation online, political communication on social media, and organizing on digital platforms. She is an expert in digital and computational research methods. She is a founding member of the academic association Rajapinta and an invited member of the Young Academy Finland. 

Recent publications: 

• Laaksonen, S-M.; Koivukoski, J. & Porttikivi, M. (2021). Clowning around a polarized issue: Rhetorical strategies and communicative outcomes of a political parody performance by Loldiers of Odin.  New Media and Society. 
• Laaksonen, S-M., Pantti, M. & Titley, G. (2020). Broadcasting the Movement and Branding Political Microcelebrities: Finnish Anti-immigration Video Practices on YouTube. Journal of Communication 70(2). 
• Laaksonen, S-M.; Bodström, E. & Haavisto, C. (2021). Finding the voice of a protest: negotiating authority among the multiplicity of voices in a pro-refugee demonstration. Forthcoming in: Benoit-Barné, C. & Martine, T. (Eds.), Speaking with one voice: Multivocality and univocality in organizing. Routledge Studies in Communication, Organization, and Organizing Series. 
• Laaksonen, S-M.; Haapoja, J.; Kinnunen, T., Nelimarkka, M. & Pöyhtäri, R. (2020). The Datafication of Hate: Expectations and Challenges in Automated Hate Speech Monitoring. Frontiers in Big Data: Data Mining and Management / Critical Data and Algorithm Studies. 

is a political scientist and University Lecturer in Social Science Methodology at the Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki. Kuokkanen is specialised in qualitative research methodology and interpretive policy analysis. Her research interests include citizen participation, public policies, collaborative and participatory forms of governance and the encounters between citizens and public administration. Her Ph.D. Thesis concerned the “projectification” of participatory policies in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. 

Kuokkanen has participated in several research projects on topics such as the projectification of the public sector, regional and urban governance and regulation. She is currently involved in two projects: the Academy of Finland funded Democratic Government as Procedural Legitimacy (), and the Horizon2020 project DeRadicalisation in Europe and Beyond: Detect, Resolve, Reintegrate (), funded by the European Commission. In September 2022, she will start a new research project on administrative speech and citizens, funded by Kone Foundation (). 

Recent publications: 

• Meriluoto, T. & Kuokkanen, K. (2021). How to make sense of citizen expertise in participatory projects?', Current Sociology (e-pub ahead of print).
• Rantala, K., Helenius, A., & Kuokkanen, K. (2021). Reilun vankilan elementit. In S. Kainulainen, & J. Saari (eds.) Suomalainen vanki: Arjen rakenteet ja elämänlaatu vankilassa. Vastapaino, 219–239. 
• Vento, I., & Kuokkanen, K. (2020). Mapping the post-bureaucratic landscape: project managers’ perception of bureaucracy in European Union Cohesion policy projects. International Review of Administrative Sciences (e-pub ahead of print).
• Kuokkanen, K. & Palonen, E. (2018). Post-Political Development and Emancipation: Urban Participatory Projects in Helsinki. In S. Knierbein. & T. Viderman (eds.) Public Space Unbound. Urban Emancipation and the Post-Political Condition. Routledge, 99–112.
• Kuokkanen, K. (2016) Developing Participation through Projects? A Case Study from the Helsinki Metropolitan Area (doctoral thesis). Publications of the Faculty of Social Sciences 6/2016. University of Helsinki.

is an interdisciplinary researcher with a primary background in media and communication. She is interested in the role of communication in addressing, or not, ethical challenges that face an increasingly globalised world. She defended her doctoral dissertation, titled ‘Ethical trade communication as moral education’, at the University of Helsinki in 2018. Currently, she works on a project entitled ‘Racism without others: Everyday mediations in Poland’ (Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies 2019-2022, Kone Foundation 2022-2024) in which she examines mundane communication avenues as sites where globally circulated racist discourses are articulated through the local socio-cultural and/or politico-historical repositories. She is also gearing up for another project which will use Poland as a case to examine, through the prism of ‘democratic imagination’, the role that media and journalism can play in democracy. 

Recent publications: 

• Polynczuk-Alenius K (2022) Palimpsestic memoryscape: Heterotopias, ‘multiculturalism’ and racism in the Polish cityscape. History & Memory 34(2). Accepted for publication. 
• Polynczuk-Alenius K (2022) ‘This attack is intended to destroy Poland’. Popular Communication. Online ahead of print:
• Polynczuk-Alenius K (2022) The menace of Jewish anti-Polonism during the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’. Patterns of Prejudice 55(3): 237-264.
• Polynczuk-Alenius K (2021) At the intersection of racism and nationalism: Theorising and contextualising the ‘anti‐immigration’ discourse in Poland. Nations & Nationalism 27(3): 766-781.

is a visiting researcher at HEPP. You can contact him at .

Prof. Postel is a professor of history at San Francisco State University. His research focuses on the political ideas of social movements, with much of his work devoted to the farmer and labor movements of the post-Civil War United States that culminated in the Populist upheaval against corporate power in the 1890s. His research has also focused on the anti-Populist political tradition in the United States, and conservative and right-wing movements from the McKinley campaign of 1896 to the Tea Party and Maga movements of the twenty-first century. 

As a visiting researcher with the Helsinki Hub on Emotions, Polarisation, and Populism, Prof. Postel continues to work on Populist related projects, including on Populist historiography, and transnational comparative work on farmer and labor movements. At the same time, he is working on a book on the Black American experience in the era of the Second World War. 

Prof. Postel received his bachelor's degree and his PhD in history at the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught courses on politics and social movements, Populism, Reconstruction, the African American experience, conservatism, and labor at UC Berkeley, Sacramento State University, and San Francisco State University. He has been a scholar-in-residence at the Center for American Studies at the University of Heidelberg; a Fulbright research chair at the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies in the Netherlands; and a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center. He is also an elected member of the Society of American Historians. 

Books:

 (Oxford, 2007)

 (FSG, 2019)

Selected Publications: 

in Research Handbook on Populism (Elgar, 2024)

in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History (2022)

(IdeAs, 2019)

(OAH, 2016)

(JGAPE, April 2016)

 is a doctoral researcher in world politics at the University of Helsinki and a researcher at the Finnish Institute in the Middle East, Beirut, Lebanon. His doctoral research focuses on the post-foundational political economy of higher education in the contexts of Jordan, Finland, and Open Access publishing (Plan S). Combining discourse theory and critical political economy, Taavi’s article-based dissertation examines how, and with what implications, different actors have articulated the economic foundations of higher education. From 2023–26, he will work as a postdoctoral researcher in the Kone Foundation-funded research project Migration, Transnational Educational Paths and Diasporic Multilingualism (MIGDIA), focusing on the ideological foundations and practices of global governance of refugee education in the context of Lebanon.  

Recent publications: 

• Sundell, T. (2021). Political economy of Plan S: a post-foundational perspective on Open Access. Political research exchange, 3(1), [1934049]. 
• Taavi Sundell (2021) Toward a Post-Foundational Political Economy: Economism and Private Property as Capitalism’s Contingent Foundations, New Political Science, 43:1, 6-29, 
• Findlow, S., Hayes, A., & Sundell, T. (2020). Academic Capitalism, Conceptualizations of. In M. E. David, & M. J. Amey (Eds.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Higher Education (pp. 18–23). Sage Publications. 
• Palonen, E., & Sundell, T. (2019). Análisis Posfundacional del Discurso. In B. Herzog, & J. Ruiz (Eds.), Análisis sociológico del discurso: enfoques, métodos, procedimientos (pp. 77–99). Publicacions de la universitat de València. 

Giorgos Venizelos is currently visiting researcher at HEPP. Should you wish to get in touch write him at .

Giorgos Venizelos is currently Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellow at Department of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Cyprus.

His research lies at the intersections of comparative politics, political communication and contemporary political theory, with special emphasis on populism and anti-populism. He is currently researching elite definitions of 'post-truth' and representations of 'anti-vax populists'.

Giorgos Venizelos is the author of Populism in Power: Discourse and Performativity in SYRIZA and Donald Trump (Routledge, 2023) and has published on international journals including Constellations, Political Studies, Representation, Critical Sociology, and key volumes such as the Research Handbook on Populism and The Populism Interviews: A Dialogue with Leading Experts.

He was previously Fellow in Political Polarisation at CEU Democracy Institute, postdoctoral researcher at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Cyprus University of Technology and visiting lecturer at the University of Cyprus.
Giorgos is the convenor of the Populism Specialist Group (Political Studies Association).

More info on the scholar’s profile can be found at his personal website:
 

Book:

Latest research:

is a postdoctoral researcher in Political Science at the University of Helsinki, funded by the Kone Foundation (2021–2022) and the Finnish Cultural Foundation (2022–2023). She holds a BA from the University of Belgrade, an MA from Heidelberg University and a PhD from the University of Helsinki. Since 2020, she has been part of the Helsinki Hub on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation (HEPP) and has previously been a visiting researcher at the University of Oxford (UK), the University of Graz (Austria), the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (Germany) and the University of Belgrade (Serbia). Marina works and publishes on political theory, as well as politics in the Balkans, while her doctoral thesis dealt with discursive, affective, and material aspects of Serbia’s claim to Kosovo as a re-articulation of the Kosovo myth.  

Recent publications: 

• Vulovic, M. (2022). The Serbian Progressive Party’s Re-articulation of the Kosovo Myth within the Internal Dialogue on Kosovo, 2017–2018. European Politics and Society.
• Vulovic, M. (2021). Losing and Gaining Kosovo: How the Serbian Government Re-articulated its Claim to Kosovo within the Brussels Dialogue (2012–2018). Unigrafia.
• Vulovic, M. (2020). Performing Statehood in Northern Kosovo: Discursive Struggle over Contested Space. Cooperation and Conflict, 55(3), 326-346. [0010836720906851].
• Vulovic, M. (2019). Mitä on odotettavissa Serbian ja Kosovon dialogissa? Idäntutkimus, 26(2), 67-68.

Based in Germany, is an external postdoctoral fellow at HEPP, associated with HEPP’s Kone-funded Now-Time, Us-Space (NTUS) project. She holds a PhD in Political Science and Administration from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków (with distinction). Previously, she was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Fellow in the Horizon project Delayed Transformational Fatigue in Central and Eastern Europe: Responding to the Rise of Illiberalism/Populism (), and contributed to the Horizon projects Populist Rebellion Against Modernity in 21st-century Eastern Europe: Neo-traditionalism and Neo-feudalism () and Rebuilding Governance and Resilience out of the Pandemic . Besides her affiliation with HEPP, she has been a visiting fellow at the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo and at the Mercator Forum Democracy and Migration (MIDEM) at the Technical University Dresden.

Sabine’s research interests include anti-gender mobilization, the far right, populism, social movements, and memory studies. Her research has been published in international journals and peer-reviewed volumes. In the “Now-Time, Us-Space” project, she focuses on the intersections of space and time in populist mobilization, examining the case of far-right protest in the eastern German city of Dresden.

Recent publications:   

• Volk, S. (2025). Rallying ‘round the Drag: Anti-gender Mobilization and the Mainstreaming of the Far Right, European Societies (online first).
   
• Volk, S. (2022). Resisting ‘Leftist Dictatorship’? Memory Politics and Collective Action Framing in Populist Far-right Street Protest, European Politics and Society, online first.  
   
• Volk, S. (2022). Patriotic History in Postcolonial Germany, Thirty Years after “Reunification”, Journal of Genocide Research, 24(2), 276-287.  
   
• Volk, S. (2022). Contested Memories of the East German Peaceful Revolution: Appeals to 1989 by the Populist PEGIDA Movement, in Contested Legacies of 1989: Geopolitics, Memories and Societies in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. N. Maslowski & K. Torbicka, pp. 117-134. Peter Lang.  
   
• Volk, S. (2021). Political Performances of Control During COVID-19: Controlling and Contesting Democracy in Germany, Frontiers in Political Science: Comparative Governance.  
• Volk, S. (2020). ‘No borders, no nations’ or ‘Fortress Europe’? How European citizens remake European borders, in European Studies and Europe: Twenty Years of Euroculture, ed. J. de Jong, M. Neuman, S. Stanivukovic-Neuman & M. van der Waal, pp. 77-92. Göttingen University Press.  
• Volk, S. (2020). “Wir sind das Volk!” Representative Claim-making and Populist Style in the PEGIDA Movement’s Discourse, German Politics, 29(4), 599–616.   
• Volk, S. (2019). Speaking for “the European People”? How the Transnational Alliance Fortress Europe Constructs a Populist Counter-narrative to European Integration, Politique Européenne, 66, 120–149.  

Cristiano Gianolla is a researcher at , where he integrates research thematic line on Democracy, Justice and Human Rights.

He obtained a PhD in Sociology and Political Science (cum Laude, Coimbra and Rome-Sapienza) by way of a dissertation on Gandhi's democratic theory and a comparative study of emerging political parties in India and Italy.



Cristiano is the Principal Investigator of the and was a team member of the , and European projects. He is a co-founding and co-coordinating member of the "" and co-coordinates the research programme "" at CES.



He is the coordinating editor of Alice News, editor of and and a reviewer for other scientific journals.



Cristiano co-coordinates the PhD course "Democratic Theories and Institutions" and the MA course "Critical Intercultural Dialogue" at the Faculty of Economics of the UC, where he also teaches on the PhD course "State, Democracy and Legal Pluralism".



He is the author of books, chapters and articles that analyse democratic theory, populism, post-colonialism, intercultural dialogue, heritage processes, movement-parties, citizenship, human rights, migrations and cosmopolitanism.

His current research interests focus on emotions and narratives in democratic processes.

is a political scientist and a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Helsinki. Lahti obtained his PhD-degree in 2022 from the University of Bologna in Italy. In his research, he examined European populism, populist actors, and political communication during the last European Union elections of 2019 within the Hybrid Media system. In his work Yannick Lahti departed from the consideration that as populism and populist rhetoric are challenging concepts to define - especially in relation to different media environments; they should be addressed and analyzed through the usage of a combination of methods and theoretical perspectives, namely Communication Studies, Corpus Linguistics, Political theory, Rhetoric and Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies. 

Recently Lahti was involved with and is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher conducting research for the transatlantic ENDURE-project funded by the Finnish Academy (Suomen Akatemia).  


Recent publications:

• Lahti, Y. D. O. , Mörtinen. M. (forthcoming), Populismin Anatomia. Helsinki: Into-kustannus.  
• Lahti, Y. D. O. (2022), „ Jäähyväiset sosialidemokratialle?“ in Lievonen,, M. and Köngäs, O. (eds.), Sosialidemokratia 2020-luvulla Näkemyksiä edistyksellisestä politiikasta, Helsinki: Näkemyksiä edistyksellisestä politiikasta – pp. 47-55.  

Dario Quattromani, an affiliated researcher to HEPP, has been studying political parties, electoral systems, Italian and EU politics, populism, local governments, communication platforms, applying participatory and deliberative tools throughout his hybrid research years.

Quattromani holds a PhD in Political Science specialising in Government and Institutions from Roma Tre University (Rome), and he is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Fundamentals of Politics at Link Campus University (Rome) and in Political Science at Tuscia University (Viterbo), a Teaching Assistant in Political Sociology at D’Annunzio University (Chieti-Pescara), Political Communication Officer at the Metropolitan City of Rome, and Communication Officer of the Italian Politics Specialist Group. He has published on populist parties and European issues, supervised several BA students and collaborates with the WhiKnow project as a country expert.

Roberto De Rosa, an affiliated researcher to HEPP, is a Senior Research Fellow in Political Science with a solid background in media studies. His main research interests focus on political parties, social capital and civic engagement, participation and political communication, political language and populism.

De Rosa is presently teaching Political Science and he is also Adjunct Professor in Political Sociology at Niccolò Cusano University (Roma). He taught Political Communication at LUMSA University of Rome and in Audio-Visual Languages and Videopolitics at Tuscia University of Viterbo and, in his teaching role, he has supervised several BA students and PhD dissertations. He has published on political parties, populist parties, social capital, political communication and participation, with his main country expertise being Italy and France. Currently, De Rosa collaborates with the WhiKnow project as a country expert.

is a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, where she earned an MSc and Ph.D. in Political Science in 2013 and 2018 respectively. Her background is in democratization research, with a particular focus on Central and Eastern Europe. She is also interested in the role of social media in elections and protest, process tracing and qualitative comparative analysis. Since 2014 she has been expanding her interest in the use of computational methods in political science, and in collecting and analyzing data through an intersectional lens. A few questions Sibinescu is interested in exploring empirically through this methodological approach are: What is the mobilizing potential of social media for political participation? How well do online/offline repertoires of political action complement each other and translate between media? How do politicians and the public co-produce political communication through social media?  

Sibinescu has been involved in HEPP projects since the start, beginning with WhiKnow and MAPO in 2019-2020 and Now-Time Us-Space in 2021-2022. As part of WhiKnow and MAPO she has done extensive data collection and analysis on social media discourses around the 2019 European Parliament elections. In NTUS she studies online/offline mobilization around anti-LGBTQ actions in Romania.  

Sibinescu has been teaching courses and guest lectures on democracy, protest, social media and politics, and research methods since 2016. 

Recent publications: 

• Salojärvi, V. & Sibinescu, L.E. (2022) The #DeniedMyVote movement in the 2019 European Parliament Elections: Actor-Emotion Analysis in Social and Legacy Media [forthcoming] 
• Pierzynska, J. & Sibinescu, L.E. [MAPO book] ‘The Heart of Europe’: Consolidating Polish Populism in the 2019 EP elections  
• Linnamäki, K. & Sibinescu, L.E.  The limits of anti-LGBTQ+ mobilizations is Central and Eastern Europe - A comparative analysis of the Romanian and Hungarian referendums [forthcoming] 
• Sibinescu, L. E. (2016). Protest, Citizen Engagement and the Coproduction of Political Communication: The Case of Romania’s 2014 Presidential Elections. Media Studies, 7(14), 142-155 

is a doctoral researcher in HEPP’s “Now-Time, Us-Space” project, funded by the Kone foundation (2021-2022). Previously, he was a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Early-Stage Researcher in the European Union’s Horizon 2020 project “Delayed Transformational Fatigue in Central and Eastern Europe: Responding to the Rise of Illiberalism/Populism (FATIGUE)” (2018-2021). Ionut holds a BA in Communication and Public Relations from the University of Cuza, Romania, and an MA in Media Studies from the University of Oslo, Norway. Ionut has previously been a visiting researcher at the Corvinus University, Hungary, and the University of Oslo, Norway. 

Ionut’s PhD project investigates how populism shapes Romanian politics and reconstructs the memory and political identity of the Hungarian community. For the “Now-Time, Us-Space” project, Ionut investigates the emerging far-right protest politics and mobilization strategies from Romania and the instrumentalization of spaces, time, and populist discourses. Ionut’s academic interests include comparative politics, minority studies, and memory politics in Eastern Europe. Ionut has published in international journals.  

Recent publications: 

• Chiruta, I. (2022 – Forthcoming). Multifaced Hungarian kin-state activism in Szeklerland: Rebuilding the last ‘nation’ through restorative nostalgia and lieux de mémoire. Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issue in Europe.   
• Chiruta, I. (2021). Challenging the Rule of Law in Romania: The Metamorphosis of Political Discourse Towards Populism. Problems of Post-Communism, 0(0), 1-18.  
• Chiruta, I. (2021) The Representation of Roma in the Romanian Media During COVID-19: Performing Control Through Discursive- Performative Repertoires. Front. Polit. Sci. 3:663874.  
• Chiruta, I. (2020). Using the Past in Populist Communicational Strategies, Populism, 3(2), 223-256. doi:

was a political scientist and communication scholar who worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki. His previous postdoctoral affiliations include POLSIS at the University of Birmingham and the Centre for Parliamentary Studies at the University of Turku. Niko’s research has focused on the relationship of populism and the media, populist political communication, populist radical right party organisation and activism, and far-right online movements. He defended his doctoral dissertation titled ‘Populism in the Hybrid Media System’ in 2019 and has published in journals such as New Media & Society; Information, Communication & Society; Discourse & Society; and Media, Culture & Society.

Publications:

• Hatakka, N. & Herkman, J. (2022) Hegemonic meanings of populism: Populism as a signifier in legacy dailies of six countries 2000–2018. Media, Culture and Society, June 2022. 
• Albertazzi, D.; Hatakka, N.; Favero, A. & Sijstermans, J. (2022) Siding with the underdog: Explaining the populist radical right’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. LSE blog. 
• Hatakka, N. (2021) Between horisontality and centralisation: Organisational form and practice in the Finns Party. Politics and Governance, 9:4.