Keynote Speakers
All keynote sessions are public events both onsite and online. Keynotes are available for everyone through the Teams links provided here.
Julia Leser is a political anthropologist and a postdoctoral researcher in the project 'Challenging Populist Truth-Making in Europe (CHAPTER)', which is based at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her research is concerned with the role of emotions in political realms, and her fields of interest include political ethnography, affect studies, national security and migration control, nationalism, populism, and political theory. One of her recent publications is the book ’The Wolves are Coming Back: The Politics of Fear in Eastern Germany’ (with Rebecca Pates, Manchester University Press, 2021).
Olesya Khromeychuk is a historian and writer. She has taught the history of East-Central Europe at several British universities. Khromeychuk is the author of A Loss. The Story of a Dead Soldier Told by His Sister (2021) and “Undetermined" Ukrainians. Post-War Narratives of the Waffen SS "Galicia" Division (2013). She is currently the Director of the Ukrainian Institute London.
Petra Guasti is an Associate Professor of Democratic Theory at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague, whose research focuses on the reconfiguration of the political landscape and revolves around three themes – populism, democratisation, and representation.
More specifically, she is concerned with the growing tension within the system of representative democracy in respect to its legitimacy. Her main interests are the study of structures, actors and processes that enable more participation of citizens, leading to more inclusiveness of representative democracy. She has an ongoing interest in civil society and human rights.
Umut Korkut is a professor of International Politics and member of the WISE Centre at Glasgow School for Business and Society at Glasgow Caledonian University. He serves the IPSA International Political Science Association as its Vice-President. He is an expert in Turkish and Hungarian politics, and has a forthcoming edited book with Amsterdam University Press entitled The End of Cosmopolitan Europe? Euroscepticism, Crisis, and Borders. Prof Korkut currently leads the EC Horizon 2020 funded research projects DRad: De-radicalisation in Europe and beyond: Detect, Resolve, Reintegrate project (2020–2023) and Demos: Democratic Efficacy and Varieties of Populism in Europe (2018–2022).
Kinga Polynczuk-Alenius is Postdoctoral Researcher (Core Fellow) in media and communication at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki. Having previously done research on ethical trade communication, she is currently completing a project concerning mediated racism and nationalism in Poland. Her articles have been published in journals across disciplines, including Nations and Nationalism, Patterns of Prejudice, Globalizations, Popular Communication, and International Journal of Cultural Studies.
Dr. Timothy Appleton completed a BA (Hons) in English and Education at Anglia Ruskin University (1992–96), then an MA in Political Theory at the University of Essex (1999–2000), and then an MPhil in the Ideology and Discourse Analysis programme, also at the University of Essex (2001–2004). He completed his Phd at the Complutense University of Madrid in 2015. The topic was political theory after Jacques Lacan. He is co-editor of the Spanish magazine #lacanemancipa and coordinator of the section of contemporary thought in the cultural centre Cruce Arte y Pensamiento in Madrid. His publications include a co-edited volume on psychoanalytic political theory – Lacan in the Logics of Emancipation (Miguel Goméz, 2018) -, as well as two co-written volumes on contemporary thought – Derrotas y Derivas (Arena Libros, 2017) & Pensamiento (Arena Libros, 2019) -. His first book, Spitting in church: A left-wing yes to Brexit (Lengua de Trapo), which dealt with populist theory and the Brexit vote, came out in Spain in 2020. The follow-up - Futurepolitics: Towards a populism of singularities (NED Ediciones) -, was published in Barcelona in April 2022. He has written numerous articles on contemporary politics for Huffington Post and the Spanish newspaper El Confidencial. He is currently a lecturer at the Camilo José Cela University in Madrid.
