The fifth HEPP Conference will be held 5-7 March, 2025 at the University of Helsinki and online. The call for papers and panel proposals is open until 10 November 2024.
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. Our thematic core remains the same this year, and the HEPP5 conference will also include a special focus on the relationship between populism,
polarisation, and emotions and the heuristic device of the social contract, understood as a tacit agreement among the members of society on the principles of the polity. The conference particularly invites investigations into how social contracts as societal consensuses and sources of solidarity are challenged by polarisation and exploited by populist politics and how these phenomena affect societies’ well-being and democratic trajectories. We also encourage contributions on the
notion of resilience. We also aim to explore how populism and emotional mobilisation renew or create new social contracts. HEPP5 also marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radically Democratic Politics by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, which has been an inspiration at HEPPsinki since its founding.
Traditionally, HEPP conferences have welcomed contributions with a focus 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, or Venezuela. HEPP maintains a broad take on populism,
polarisation, and emotions, and the following themes:
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Affects, a(nta)gonism, and political polarisation
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Audiovisual political communication
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Authoritarianism and illiberalism
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Climate, crises, and grievances
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Cultural populism, conspiracy theories, and misinformation
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Datafication and methods in large social media data
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Gender in populism and polarisation
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New social contracts and challenges to democracy
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Political theory of populism, resilience, and social contracts
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Memory politics and the political (mis)use of time and space
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Tribalism, nationalism, and racism
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Political communication in the 2024 European elections
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(Post-)Pandemic populisms and resilience
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Hegemony, common grounds, and epistemic populisms
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Populist logics and dynamics
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Post- and de-colonialism
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Political frontiers and “us” building
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Political humour and populist rhetoric
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Political communication and media in times of war and crisis
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Religion and populism