Current Members
of the International Populism Research Network
Paula Diehl (PhD Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) ist Professorin für Politische Theorie, Ideengeschichte und Politische Kultur sowie Direktorin des Internationalen Netzwerks für Populismusforschung an der Universität Kiel, Deutschland. Sie war Stipendiatin und Gastprofessorin unter anderem an der Sciences Po (Paris), der École des Hautes Études, der University of Pennsylvania, dem Institute of Advanced Studies (Bologna) und La Sapienza (Rom). Ihre Forschung widmet sich der politischen Repräsentation und den körperlichen Performances, dem politischen Imaginären, der Demokratietheorie und dem Populismus sowie der Normalisierung der extremen Rechten.
Helge Petersen
(Coordinator)
Helge Petersen is a postdoctoral researcher at the research area of Political Theory, History of Ideas and Political Culture as well as the coordinator of the International Populism Research Network at Kiel University, Germany. He completed a PhD at the University of Glasgow with a research project on the conjunctures of political struggles over racist violence in British post-war history. His research interests lie in the area of populism, racism and antisemitism studies, critical theory and social psychology, social and political crisis theory, as well as political and historical sociology.
Théo Aiolfi is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie EUTOPIA-SIF Postdoctoral Fellow at CY Cergy Paris University and one of the convenors of the Populism Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association (PSA). His main research areas are the performative and stylistic dimensions of populism, the links between political ecology and the populist repertoire as well as political communication of far-right and green political actors.
Manuel Anselmi is currently a Senior Assistant Professor in Political Sociology at the University of Bergamo.
Currently he is working on the relationship between new ideologies, populism and political imagination.
Giuseppe Ballacci is a Research Associate at the Center for Ethics, Politics and Society at the University of Minho. His research areas are contemporary political theory, history of political theory, democratic theory, political representation, populism and rhetoric.
Brigitte Bargetz is senior researcher in Political Science and principal investigator of the research project "New Charity Economy Through the Lens of Affective Statehood: Volunteering for Food Banks and Social Supermarkets in Austria“ (with Markus Griesser) at Vienna University of Economics and Business as well as co-editor of the feminist political science journal “Femina Politica”; until 2024, she has been coordinator of the International Populism Research Network at Kiel University. Her current research focuses on theories of democracy and (authoritarian) populism, politics and affect from critical, queer-feminist and postcolonial perspectives, transformations of the welfare state, and affective methodologies.
Giorgia Bulli is Senior Lecturer of Political Science at the Università degli Studi di Firenze. Her research focuses on populism, right-wing extremism, political communication and political culture.
Paulo Henrique Cassimiro is professor of Political Theory at the Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ) and member of the International Populism Research Network. His main research areas are history of conservative and reactionary political thought, brazilian and latin-american political thought, theory of democracy and populism in brazilian contemporary politics.
Carlos de la Torre is professor and director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida. His research focuses on populism, democratization and authoritarianism, and racism and citizenship in the Americas.
Nina Elena Eggers is academic coordinator in the Liberal Arts & Sciences Program at the University of Hamburg and a PhD candidate at the University of Bremen. Her main research interests are in Contemporary Political Theory, Theories of (Right-wing) Populism, Ideologies of the Radical New Right and Gender Politics.
Merve Genç ist Doktorandin und verortet am Arbeitsbereich Internationale Politische Soziologie am Institut für Sozialwissenschaften der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel. Ihre Hauptforschungsbereiche umfassen poststrukturalistische Theorie, insbesondere Hegemonie und soziale Bewegungen sowie diskurstheoretische Sichtweisen auf Populismus.
Reinhard Heinisch is Professor of Comparative Austrian Political Science and Head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Salzburg. His research focuses on the rise of the radical right, populism, democracy, elections, and survey research.
Christoffer Kølvraa is an Associate Professor at the Section of European Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. His current research focuses on populist performativity, affect theory, extreme right fictional literature and its appropriation of pop-cultural objects and narratives (e.g. mainstream cinema).
Oscar Mazzoleni ist Professor für Politikwissenschaft und politische Soziologie an der Universität Lausanne. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte sind grenzüberschreitende, rechtspopulistische Diskurse in Europa und Populismus und Verschwörungserzählungen während der COVID-19-Pandemie.
Benjamin Moffitt is Associate Professor of Politics at the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne. His research is located at the intersection of comparative politics, contemporary political theory and political communications, and focuses on contemporary populism across the globe.
Dirk Nabers is Professor at the Department of International Political Sociology at Kiel University. His research focuses on poststructuralism, crisis theories, and discourse theory.
Mojca Pajnik is Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Media and Communication, University of Ljubljana and a senior research advisor at the Peace Institute (PI) in Ljubljana. Her scholarship resides at the intersection of political theory, media and communication, populism, gender and social movements research.
Kenneth M. Roberts holds the Richard J. Schwartz Professorship in Government at Cornell University. A specialist in comparative and Latin American political science, his research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of the study of populism, political parties, and social movements. Currently, he is investigating the origins of populism in crises of democratic representation in Latin America and beyond.
Birgit Sauer is Professor of Political Science at the University of Vienna. Her research focuses on right-wing populism and gender, right-wing populism and the media, comparative gender politics, democracy, the state, and emotions.
Frank A. Stengel is a research associate at Kiel University. In his current research he is focusing on International Relations theory, populism (in particular Trumpism), knowledge production in German peace and security policy, discourse theory and analysis.
The Thematic Group on Populism within the German Political Science Association (GPSA) offers a discussion and networking space for populism research in German-speaking countries. The group has a special focus on populism theories and the development of populism concepts in connection with empirical analyses on the topic of populism. The thematic group aims to take into account the broad diversity of approaches within national and international populism research and is open to all social science disciplines as well as conceptual and methodological approaches to populism research.
Die Untersuchung von populistischen Emotionsnarrativen ermöglicht eine tiefere Analyse, wie sich populistische Phänomene konstituieren und wie sie sich auf das politische Verhalten auswirken. Die Literatur zeigt zunehmend, dass eine tiefere Auseinandersetzung mit Emotionen notwendig ist, um die Wirkung des Populismus in der europäischen Politik (und darüber hinaus) zu verstehen. Das Projekt UNpacking POPulism: Comparing the formation of emotion narratives and their effects on political behaviour (Coimbra) versucht, die Bedingungen zu entschlüsseln, die rechtspopulistische Politik ermöglichen und begünstigen, und befasst sich mit der verbreiteten und dennoch wenig untersuchten Annahme, dass die Mobilisierung von Emotionen eine grundlegende Ursache ist.
Ruth Wodak is Professor of Discourse Studies at Lancaster University and the University of Vienna. Her research interests include critical discourse studies, language and politics (populism studies), identity and past politics, gender studies, migration studies, and linguistic bias research on racism and anti-Semitism.
Former members
Sara Minelli is a postdoc researcher in the research area of Political Theory, History of Ideas and Political Culture and coordinator of the International Populism Research Network at Kiel University. In her dissertation (EHESS, Paris, 2022), she analysed the idea of a ‘political myth’ in the theory and practice of fascism and its critique in the 20th century. Her current research interests lie in critical theory, theories of fascism, myth, utopia, and political temporality.
Lena Weige is research assistant at Kiel University and PhD candidate of the International Populism Research Network. Her current research interests are performativity and performance studies, populism and democracy, democracy theory as well as symbolic and political representation.
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