About O&P

‘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.
These workshops will bring together researchers from many disciplines covering social, political, psychological, economic and cultural aspects.
They will also include researchers with interdisciplinary bridging skills, including participatory approaches, philosophy and social simulation. As well as plenaries and group discussions the workshop will utilise world café and fishbowl sessions to encourage connections.
They have the ultimate aim of building a more complete and nuanced understanding of the phenomena, but the workshops will only be starting points for this.
The workshops aim to result in (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.

More about the background and starting points of the organisers can be found on this page.

Events & Channels:

Due to covid-19 we have had to postpone the face-face Lorentz workshop until 2021. However we are starting the discussion now via:

This website – if you have relevant things to post here please email them to us
A virtual workshop 3pm-6pm CET on each of the days 9th, 10th and 11th June 2020. To attend this, register from the Lorentz page on this.
A joint session with the SIAM network on simulation approaches to identity during Social Simulation week. Details to follow.
A Slack space for discussion about the topic, please ask for an invite to this
All building towards the face-face Lorentz workshop on the topic 7-11 June 2020.

Any queries or requests please contact us using the details on the Contact us page.