(for those who have not already asked to do this)

Topic

• 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.

Invited speaker

Jo Berry, founder of “Building Bridges for Peace” (https://buildingbridgesforpeace.org/), will give an invited talk. For more about her amazing story see: https://buildingbridgesforpeace.org/about-building-bridges-for-peace/jo-berry-founder/ 

Format

• The 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.

Who it is aimed at

• 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.

Workshop aims

• 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.
• 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.

Costs etc.

There is no costs for online attendees.

After the workshop

We hope to build on the progress made in this workshop in terms of future joint grant applications, publications and other initiatives.

If you want to virtually attend

Email Bruce Edmonds <bruce@edmonds.name>, with answers to the following questions by the end of Sunday, 5th July 2022

• Name
• Email address
• One short paragraph on why you are interested in this topic
• Your field/background/experience
• Country
• Gender (describe this as you wish)
• Are you an Early Stage Researcher (within 4 years of PhD)?

(If you have already emailed me you do not have to do so again)

For more details about the event, see:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10CMpazlpO-WeNMYkr3MtycNYM3uo63BD/view?usp=sharing

Blog for news about the event is this site (otheringandpolarisation.org). There is also a Slack space for discussion – email me (BE) if you want to be part of that.