Virtual Meeting on “Othering and Polarisation” 9-11 June 2020

  • ‘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.

Due to Covid-19 the face-face Lorentz workshop on this topic has had to be postponed until 2021.

To start the discussion (and because we are impatient) there will be a virtual workshop over 3 days: the 9-11 June 2020, 3pm-6pm CEST each day (including a break!).

Please register here to be involved up to the 31st May – registration is necessary but there is no fee for this. We will be limited by the numbers we can cope with.

Scientific Organizers:

  • Julia Eberlen, Université libre de Bruxelles
  • Bruce Edmonds, Manchester Metropolitian University
  • Lusine Grigoryan, Ruhr University Bochum
  • Wander Jager, University College Groningen
  • Geeske Scholz, Osnabrück University