Othering and Polarisation 2022

Othering’ and polarisation have immediate and potentially severe consequences for politics across Europe – in terms of Populist denigration of sub-groups but also when politics is so divided that each side will not listen to the other (e.g. Brexit in the UK). Unfortunately, relevant theory, knowledge and perspectives on these phenomena are splintered across many disciplines, ones that normally do not talk to each other.

This face-face workshop consists of 5 days of intensive collaboration in a variety of formats. A few of the plenary sessions and one breakout group will be available to online attendees

This workshop would bring together researchers from many disciplines covering social, political, psychological, economic and cultural aspects.
It also includes researchers with interdisciplinary bridging skills, including participatory approaches, philosophy and social simulation. We are particularly keen that practitioners as well as researchers should come and contribute.

The workshop aims during this week are:
1.It has the ultimate aim of building a more complete and nuanced understanding of the phenomena, but the workshop would only be the starting point for this.
2.The workshop will work to produce (a) a ‘map’ of how the different contributions from these fields ‘fit’ together (or otherwise), (b) a list of identified research challenges (c) an agreed joint plan of work and (d) early prototypes of integrative agent-based social simulations to try to bring the aspects together within some dynamic frameworks.

Please click here for more information.