ASEN

Kin Majorities: Identity and Citizenship in Crimea and Moldova with Eleanor Knott
2022-10-11 16:00 - 17:00 (Europe/Paris) | Online
We sit down with Eleanor Knott to discuss her new book, Kin Majorities: Identity and Citizenship in Crimea and Moldova live on Facebook and YouTube, with members receiving an invite to join on Zoom.
About Kin Majorities
In Moldova, the number of dual citizens has risen exponentially in the last decades resulting in over 1 million, or one third of Moldova’s population, becoming Romanian citizens. Before annexation, many saw Russia as granting citizenship to–or passportizing–large numbers in Crimea. Why do communities engage with citizenship from an external state? And how does engagement with dual citizenship intersect, or not, with identity? Leveraging a bottom-up, interpretive and comparative approach, Kin Majorities (McGill University Press, 2022) analyzes data collected from ordinary people in Crimea and Moldova in 2012 and 2013, just before Russia’s annexation of Crimea, to explore the intersections of identity and citizenship in these cases.
As the book is quite expensive, if anyone would like any help getting a copy the author is happy to be contacted at e.k.knott@lse.ac.uk.
About Dr Knott
Eleanor Knott (she/her, @ellie_knott) is a political scientist and Assistant Professor in Qualitative Methodology in the Department of Methodology, LSE. Her current research interests include the politics of identity and citizenship (predominantly in post-Soviet space) and qualitative research methods, primarily ethics of research. She has published in Perspectives on Politics, Qualitative Research, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Citizenship Studies and Democratization, among others. Her first book—Kin Majorities: Identity and Citizenship in Crimea and Moldova—was published with McGill University Press in 2022.

Special report from the field: The women of the Islamic State in Iraq with Susan Schulman
2022-09-30 16:00 - 17:00 (Europe/Paris) | Online
We sit down with Susan Schulman, to discuss her recent Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism article, ‘Special report from the field: The women of the Islamic State in Iraq‘.
Susan Schulman is a photo-journalist; visit her website at susanschulman.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @susanschulman23.
The event will be streamed live on Facebook and YouTube, with members receiving an invite to join the Zoom meeting.

Prof. Jack Spence OBE - 60 years in international affairs
2022-09-29 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Paris) | KCL Council Room, K2.29, King's Building, Strand Campus, London, WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom
To Professor Jack Spence’s retirement, Professor Funmi Olonisakin, Vice-Principal KCL, the Department of War Studies, and the African Leadership Centre, King’s College London, and ASEN are hosting a drinks and nibbles reception with a few brief contributions from some of those with whom he has worked, or whom he has mentored and influenced.
Registration for this event is required via KCL.
Professor Jack Spence OBE has been one of the leading figures in International Relations for several decades. He has been awarded 3 honorary doctorates and 4 honorary fellowships, one from King’s College London. His work has covered theory and practice, with focuses on international politics as a field, diplomacy, nationalism, Africa, war and defence education, and poetry and literature. Born in South Africa, he came to Britain for postgraduate study at the LSE.
His eminent academic career spanned academic posts at the University of Natal, University College, Swansea, and the University of Leicester, where he was appointed Professor and Pro-Vice Chancellor. From 1991-1997, he was Director of Studies at Chatham House — the Royal Institute for International Affairs, and subsequently, Academic Advisor at the Royal College of Defence Studies, where he edited the Seaford House Papers. In 1997, he joined the Department of War Studies at King’s, where he is Professor of Diplomacy.
Among his many other roles, he served as Chair of the British International Studies Associ-ation, President of the African Studies Association, and Chair of the David Davies Memorial Institute, as well as Chair of the International Advisory Council of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism. In 2003, he was awarded the OBE for services to military education in the Jubilee Honours.

Taras Kuzio: Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War
2022-06-28 17:30 - 18:30 UTC
Join us for a discussion with Taras Kuzio on his new book, Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War.
We’ll be live on Facebook and YouTube, and members will receive an invitation to join the Zoom call.
This book is the first to provide an in-depth understanding of the 2014 crisis, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Europe’s de facto war between Russia and Ukraine. The book provides a historical and contemporary understanding behind President Vladimir Putin Russia’s obsession with Ukraine and why Western opprobrium and sanctions have not deterred Russian military aggression.
The volume provides a wealth of detail about the inability of Russia, from the time of the Tsarist Empire, throughout the era of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and since the dissolution of the latter in 1991, to accept Ukraine as an independent country and Ukrainians as a people distinct and separate from Russians. The book highlights the sources of this lack of acceptance in aspects of Russian national identity. In the Soviet period, Russians principally identified themselves not with the Russian Soviet Federative Republic, but rather with the USSR as a whole. Attempts in the 1990s to forge a post-imperial Russian civic identity grounded in the newly independent Russian Federation were unpopular, and notions of a far larger Russian ‘imagined community’ came to the fore. A post-Soviet integration of Tsarist Russian great power nationalism and White Russian émigré chauvinism had already transformed and hardened Russian denial of the existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians as a people, even prior to the 2014 crises in Crimea and the Donbas. Bringing an end to both the Russian occupation of Crimea and to the broader Russian–Ukrainian conflict can be expected to meet obstacles not only from the Russian de facto President-for-life, Vladimir Putin, but also from how Russia perceives its national identity.
Taras Kuzio is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Political Science, National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy and an Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society .

Gertjan Willems on 'Nationalism and Film: Towards a New Research Agenda'
2022-04-07 14:00 - 15:30 (Europe/Helsinki) | Online
The final plenary from the joint ASEN-NISE 2022 Conference on Nationalism and Media will be broadcast live on YouTube and Facebook.
Abstract
The majority of research on the relationship between nationalism and film has focused on the representation of nations, nationalism and national identities in feature films. This leaves open a wide array of underexplored research possibilities, of which some of the most pertinent ones will be addressed in this talk. Research on the history of nationalism and film in Flanders will serve as a stepping stone to explore new research avenues. I will discuss, among other things, the value of integrated analyses combining the dominant method of representation analysis with production and reception analysis; the importance of a broad conception of nationalism; the notion of multiplicity, both in terms of attention for multiple co-existing national discourses and in terms of the relations between national, subnational and transnational discourses; the relevance of the concept of national indifference for film studies; the potential of amateur films and home movies for a bottom-up approach to nationalism research. The aim of this talk is to formulate a new research agenda for future nationalism and film studies, thereby also touching upon possible new directions for the field of nationalism and media studies at large.
About Michael
Gertjan Willems is a film and media scholar. He is assistant professor at the University of Antwerp. He is affiliated to the Research Centre for Visual Poetics (dept. of Literature) and the Visual and Digital Cultures Research Centre (dept. of Communication Sciences). He is also a guest professor at the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies at Ghent University. He has been guest lecturer or visiting scholar at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, Saint-Louis University Brussels, the University of Amsterdam, the Belgian Historical Institute in Rome, the Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas, and the University of York. Since 2016, he is chair of the Film Studies section of ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association).
His research interests are aimed at a critical analysis of film and media. He has particular research expertise in media and nation-building, Belgian film history, film adaptations. He is the author of a Dutch-language monograph on the relation between film policy and nation-building in Flanders (2017) and editor of European Film Remakes (with Eduard Cuelenaere and Stijn Joye, 2021) and a Dutch-language anthology on the history of media and nation-building in Flanders (with Bruno De Wever, 2020). He published various articles in journals such as Nations and Nationalism, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Journal of Belgian History and Journal of Popular Film and Television. You can find out more about Gertjan at his blog https://gertjanwillems.wordpress.com/

Athena Leoussi on Art and national modernisation
2022-04-06 14:00 - 15:30 (Europe/Helsinki) | Online
The second plenary from the joint ASEN-NISE 2022 Conference on Nationalism and Media will be broadcast live on YouTube and Facebook.
Abstract
The paper discusses the contribution of European artists to the modern idea of the nation, which transformed European societies into modern national states. It shows how artists engaged with the Enlightenment and Romanticism, and their two distinct visions of a modern world of nations. It shows that both visions set out to revive past traditions – past golden ages: one, the classical tradition of democratic Athens and Republican Rome, the other rural, communal and religious traditions. These revivals of the past became the touchstones of the national revolutions which transformed the relations between centre and periphery, in search of political, social, cultural and human integration. Initially antagonistic, the Enlightenment and Romanticism became a single vision – a single striving: the pursuit of both liberty and identity. Artists set out to articulate these visions as they collided and combined. In so doing, they created not only icons of the modern world of nations, but also modern forms of art.
About Athena
Athena’s research interests include, the history, theories and problems of nationalism and national identity; the comparative study of the peoples of Europe – their political and cultural histories and contacts; the representation of national identity in art; race, anti-semitism and national identity in 19th-century Europe; and the role of the classical tradition in the making of modern national identities. Through her specific interest in the revival of the classical Greek body in modern Europe, she contributed to the British Museum exhibition, ‘Defining Beauty: The Body in Ancient Greek Art‘, curated by Dr Ian Jenkins.
As Founder (1991) of the global, Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN), which she chaired for many years, a member of ASEN’s Advisory Council, and a Founding Editor (1994) of the international journal, Nations and Nationalism (Wiley-Blackwell), which Athena continues to edit with the other members of the editorial team, she have been involved in the development of a variety of research projects, seminars, conferences and colloquia on nationalism and national identity. Her research has received funding from the Greek State, the Hellenic Foundation, and the Irving Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, USA. Athena have been an assessor for the British Academy monographs section, and for the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and has been Visiting Senior Fellow in the Government Department, LSE (2008-12), and since 2012, she hold an International Fellowship at the Panteion University (Athens, Greece). She is currently director of European studies at the University of Reading.

Michael Skey on 'Ecstatic nationalism and the media: or why nations are not really imagined communities'
2022-04-05 10:10 - 11:30 (Europe/Helsinki) | Online
The first plenary from the joint ASEN-NISE 2022 Conference on Nationalism and Media will be broadcast live on YouTube and Facebook.
Abstract
Contra to Anderson’s seminal argument, this paper argues that nations are not really imagined but lived, embodied, heard, viewed, represented, materialised and felt communities. For the purposes of this session, and to highlight the crucial role of the media in these processes, I want to focus on the significance of ecstatic nationalism, events designed to commemorate, celebrate or mourn the nation.
Building on Dayan & Katz’s (1992) seminal work on media events, the paper outlines the main features of such ecstatic national events before offering a new framework for making sense of their impact, which draws on insights from social psychology, anthropology and media studies. In the latter case, this includes the role of both legacy media and, increasingly, everyday users on digital platforms in representing both individual nations, but also the international system, as both natural and significant to their own lives.
Alongside, the everyday representation of nations, it is argued that these events are crucial in not only mediating the nation as a more-or-less coherent entity that can be seen and heard and idealised but also in providing opportunities for collective engagement and effervescence. Put simply, mediated representations of such events – which are difficult to escape even if you have no interest in them – offer first-hand evidence that, for substantial numbers, the nation still matters. Moreover, these processes may echo beyond the event itself into the wider routines of daily life allowing national symbols to become part of the comfortable furniture of everyday existence because their meaning and significance has been re-articulated during such periods.
About Michael
Michael jointed the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University in June 2016. He was previously a lecturer in media and cultural studies at University of East Anglia and has also taught sociology at UEL and University of Leicester. He was awarded his PhD by the Department of Media & Communications at the London School of Economics in October 2008. His doctoral research was funded by the AHRC and a subsequent monograph based on this work was awarded the 2012 BSA/Philip Abrams Memorial Prize.
Michael’s research interests are in the areas of; national belonging, globalisation, sociology of everyday life, media events and rituals, mediatization, sport and discourse theory.

The Anthony D. Smith Lecture 2022: Sabina Mihelj on Platform Nations
2022-04-04 17:00 - 18:30 (Europe/Helsinki)
The 2022 Anthony D. Smith Lecture will be given by Professor Sabina Mihelj of Loughborough University on the subject of ‘Platform Nations’ at 1700CET on 4th April in Lecture Hall 1 in the Meerminne building on the City Campus of University of Antwerp at Sint-Jacobstraat 2, 2000 Antwerpen. Attendance is free and open to all; the Lecture will also be streamed online at Facebook Live and YouTube Live.
Abstract
While much has been said about the role of digital media in the proliferation of nationalism, and especially in the resurgence of exclusionary nationalist rhetoric and sentiments, we know much less about the nature and existence of nations in the digital world. For instance, how do nation-states engage in nation-building in the new communication environment? How has the growing impact of digital platforms affected the way cultural institutions engage with national audiences? How and where do ordinary platform users encounter and experience nations online? To address this gap, I introduce the concept of ‘platform nations’, understood as imagined communities whose continued existence depends, in part, on the support of digital platforms. I then focus on three key mechanisms that contribute to the formation and reproduction of platform nations: the politically and commercially motivated development of national platform ecologies; copyright legislation and nation branding strategies designed to protect and promote national cultures in the online domain; and the prevailing practices and preferences among platform users. I reflect on how these mechanisms differ from those at work in pre-digital communication environments, highlighting the influence of platform affordances and business models. I conclude with a set of methodological considerations and suggestions for empirical approaches to researching platform nations.
About Prof. Mihelj

Professor Sabina Mihelj joined Loughborough University in 2004, having previously worked and studied in Slovenia, Hungary and Germany. Over her time at Loughborough, Sabina served as Programme Director for both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in communication and media studies. She is currently Director of Research for Communication and Media, and co-led Loughborough’s REF2021 submission to the D34 panel. She is a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College, and sits on the editorial boards of several international media and cultural analysis journals.
Sabina is particularly interested in the comparative study of media cultures across both traditional and new media, with a focus on public culture, nationalism, identity, and audiences. She has written extensively on the relationship between communication, nations and nationalism, Cold War media and culture, and comparative media research. Her research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Norwegian Research Council, and the Ministry of Science and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia.
Sabina also has a track record of collaboration with non-academic stakeholders. Her research on Cold War television and everyday life has also served as a basis for several museum exhibitions in South-eastern Europe, the UK and the US, and a TV documentary for BBC 4. This work provided the basis for one of Loughborough’s REF Impact Case Studies, Challenging Cold War Stereotypes. Her current work on the role of media in the rise of illiberalism in Eastern Europe, conducted with Dr Václav Štětka, involves collaboration with the European Broadcasting Union, European Federation of Journalists, and the European Platform of Regulatory Authorities.
You can find out more about Sabina at her profile on Loughborough University’s website or follow her on Twitter.

IWD2022: #BreakTheBias (in Social Science)
2022-03-08 16:00 - 17:30 UTC
To mark International Women’s Day 2022, ASEN Vice-President Daphne Halikiopoulou sits down with Petra Guasti, Anna Triandafyllidou, Rose de Geus, Erin Jenne, and Liz Carter to discuss equality in academia in general and in the social sciences in particular, what progress has been made, and what is still to be done to #BreakTheBias. Join us for what will be a fascinating conversation on Facebook Live or YouTube Live – members will receive an email invitation to join in on Zoom.
About the panellists
Dr Elisabeth Carter is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Keele University and Research Lead in the Centre for Comparative Politics and Policy. Her research focusses on elections, electoral systems and behaviour, party competition, and right-wing extremism and has written on these topics in books published by Manchester University Press, Oxford University Press, Routledge, and Sage, and in articles in the European Journal of Political Research, the Journal of Political Ideologies, Representation, and West European Politics. Her PhD examined why right-wing extremist parties across Western Europe have experienced such varying levels of electoral success. She came to Keele in 2003 as a post-doctoral researcher within the Keele European Parties Research Unit (KEPRU) to work on a project on the Europeanization of national political parties before being appointed Lecturer in Politics in 2005 and Senior Lecturer in 2011, where she has been School Research Director, REF Lead for Politics and International Studies, and Postgraduate Research Student Director. I was also the Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science from 2016 to 2018. Read more about Dr Carter at Keele.
Prof Erin Jenne is Professor of International Relations at Central European University in Vienna. She was a MacArthur Fellow at Stanford. Her first book, Ethnic Bargaining: The Paradox of Minority Empowerment (Cornell University Press, 2007) is the winner of Mershon Center’s Edgar S. Furniss Book Award in 2007 and was also named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Magazine. The book is based on her dissertation, which won the Seymour Martin Lipset Award for Best Comparativist Dissertation. She has published numerous book chapters and articles in International Studies Quarterly, Security Studies, Regional and Federal Studies, Journal of Peace Research, Civil Wars, International Studies Review, Research and Politics, Journal of Democracy, Nationalities Papers and Ethnopolitics. Read more about Prof Jenne at CEU.
Dr Rose de Geus is Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the University of Reading. Her research focusses on women in politics, elections, and comparative politics, particularly women’s voting behaviour; how voters view women politicians; and why women remain under-represented in politics. She has been a postdoc fellow at the University of Toronto, looking at Canadian elections, and at Nuffield College, Oxford, where she worked with the British election study team. Read more about Dr de Geus at Reading.
Prof Anna Triandafyllidou is Canada Excellence Research Chair at Ryerson University. She is engaged into a variety of projects on migration management with a special focus on the role of migrant agency, the interaction between different drivers of migration and the global governance of migration and asylum (including an interest in irregular migration). With regard to migrant integration, she has a special interest in issues of identity, diversity, nationalism and multicultural citizenship approaches. She is also looking into the governance of cultural and religious diversity in different world regions (Europe, Asia, the MENA region). Last but not least she is considering migration and migrant integration in relation to the wider processes of socio-economic and geopolitical transformation that characterise the 21st century. Read more about Prof Triandafyllidou at Ryerson.
Dr Petra Guasti is Associate Professor of Democratic Theory at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses on the reconfiguration of the political landscape and revolves around three themes – representation, democratization, and populism – and has appeared in Democratic Theory, Democratization, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, European Political Science, East European Politics and Societies and Cultures, Politics and Governance, East European Politics, and elsewhere. She serve as an expert for Bertelsmann Transformation Index, Sustainable Governance Indicators (for over a decade together with Dr. Zdenka Mansfeldova), and V-Dem since 2018. In 2020 she was appointed to the expert board of the Nation in Transit (Freedom House). Read more about Dr Guasti at Researchgate.
Prof Daphne Halikiopoulou is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Reading, Vice-President of ASEN, and Joint Editor-in-Chief of Nations and Nationalism. She has written extensively on nationalism and the cultural and economic determinants of far-right party support. She is the author of The Golden Dawn’s ‘Nationalist Solution’: explaining the rise of the far right in Greece (with Sofia Vasilopoulou) and numerous articles on European far-right parties. Her research appears in the European Journal of Political Research, Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Government and Opposition, European Political Science Review, and Nations and Nationalism among others. In 2016, Daphne was the recipient of an American Political Science Association (APSA) European Politics and Society Section Best Paper Award for my co-authored article ‘Risks, Costs and Labour Markets: Explaining Cross-National Patterns of Far-Right Party Success in European Parliament Elections’ (with Tim Vlandas). Read more about Prof Halikiopoulou at Reading.

Sikh Nationalism
2022-02-17 09:00 - 10:30 UTC
We sit down with Gurharpal Singh and Giorgio Shani to discuss their new book, Sikh Nationalism: From a Dominant Minority to an Ethno-religious diaspora, along with John Hutchinson, Atsuko Ichijo, and Ian Talbot as discussants. Join us on Facebook Live or YouTube Live; members will receive an email to join in on the Zoom call.
Drawing on A. D. Smith’s ethno-symbolic approach, Gurharpal Singh and Giorgio Shani use a new integrated methodology to understanding the historical and sociological development of modern Sikh nationalism. By emphasising the importance of studying Sikh nationalism from the perspective of the nation-building projects of India and Pakistan, the recent literature on religious nationalism and the need to integrate the study of the diaspora with the Sikhs in South Asia, they provide a fresh approach to a complex subject. Singh and Shani evaluate the current condition of Sikh nationalism in a globalised world and consider the lessons the Sikh case offers for the comparative study of ethnicity, nations and nationalism.
Gurharpal Singh, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Gurharpal Singh is Emeritus Professor of Sikh and Punjab Studies at SOAS, University of London. His previous publications include The Partition of India (2009), Sikhs in Britain: The Making of a Community (2006), and Ethnic Conflict in India: A Case Study of Punjab (2000).
Giorgio Shani, International Christian University, Tokyo
Giorgio Shani is Professor and Chair of the Department of Politics and International Studies at International Christian University (ICU) in Japan. He is the author of Religion, Identity and Human Security (2015) and Sikh Nationalism and Identity in a Global Age (2010).

The Symbolic State
2022-02-09 16:00 - 17:00 UTC | Online
Karlo Basta’s new book, The Symbolic State: Minority Recognition, Majority Backlash, and Secession in Multinational Countries, is a comprehensive re-examination of multinational state politics through the lens of symbolic institutions, covering cases such as Canada, Spain, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. We sit down with Karlo to discuss the book and its ideas live on Facebook and YouTube; as ever, members will receive an email to join in on Zoom. The event will be chaired by Javier Carbonell Castañer (Sciences Po/Edinburgh).
The Symbolic State is published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Karlo Basta is co-director of the Centre on Constitutional Change and co-convenor of the UACES research network ‘(Re)Imagining Territorial Politics in Times of Crisis’, and is a lecturer in the School of Social and Political Science and the University of Edinburgh.

VOX: The Rise of the Spanish Populist Radical Right
2022-01-11 17:00 - 18:30 UTC | Online
We sit down with the authors of the definitive new book on VOX, José Rama, Lisa Zanotti, Stuart J. Turnbull-Dugarte, and Andrés Santana, to examine a new, populist radical right party that has emerged in Spain, a country thought to have been immunised against the far right by the experiences and memories of the Franco dictatorship. Join us on Facebook Live and YouTube Live for the discussion; members will receive an invitation to join via Zoom.
José Rama is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science & International Relations at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), Spain. He holds a PhD in Political Science at UAM. He has published in a number of leading journals including, amongst others, Journal of Democracy, Government and Opposition, and European Political Science Review.
Lisa Zanotti is an Associate Researcher at Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias Sociales – Universidad Diego Portales (UDP), Chile. She holds a joint PhD in Political Science from Diego Portales University and in Humanities from Leiden University, the Netherlands. She has recently published in Political Studies Review, and Comparative European Politics.
Stuart J. Turnbull-Dugarte is an Assistant Professor at the University of Southampton, UK. He holds a PhD in Political Science from King’s College London, UK. He has published in a number of leading journals including, amongst others, the European Journal of Political Research, Journal of European Public Policy, West European Politics and Electoral Studies.
Andrés Santana is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain. He researches in voting behaviour (populist parties, turnout and the decision to vote), women’s political representation, and research methodology. He has recently published in the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, Social Politics, Politics & Gender, and East European Politics.

Russian Nationalism and Russian Foreign Policy
2021-12-13 17:00 - 18:30 UTC | Online
How does Russian nationalism affect Russian foreign policy, and in turn how is Russian nationalism affected by Russian foreign policy? We answer these questions and more with Dr Sofia Tipaldou and Dr Anastasia Shesterinina in our last event of 2021, live on Facebook and YouTube. As ever, members will be emailed a link to join in on the Zoom call.
Dr Tipaldou is Marie Skłodowska Curie Research Fellow at the University of Manchester undertaking an original research project on the Impact of Russian nationalism on Russia’s foreign policy. She is an active multidisciplinary collaborator, and has undertaken a range of international visiting fellowships resulting in co-authored scholarly publications. Her published research centres on Russian and Greek nationalism, the far right, social movements, and comparative nationalism studies.
Our respondent will be Dr Shesterinina, who is a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield, as well as being a UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellow and Director of the Centre for the Comparative Study of Civil War. Dr Shesterinina’s interests lie at the intersection of international relations, comparative politics, and qualitative methodology. Her field-intensive research explores the internal dynamics of and international intervention in contemporary armed conflict, with a focus on social mobilization, ex-combatant demobilization and reintegration, and civilian protection norms and practices.

The transnational circulation of digital nationalism
2021-12-06 16:00 - 17:30 UTC | Online
We join the authors of the forthcoming Nations and Nationalism themed section on ‘the transnational circulation of digital nationalism’ to discuss their papers. Join us live on Facebook or YouTube; as ever, members will receive an invitation to join in on Zoom.
The papers are all #openaccess and so can be read free of charge. They are:

‘The transnational circulation of digital nationalism‘ by Krisztina Lajosi and Pál Nyíri
‘From cyberfascism to terrorism: On 4chan/pol/ culture and the transnational production of memetic violence‘ by Cathrine Thorleifsson
‘Emergent nationalism in China’s sociotechnical networks: How technological affordance and complexity amplify digital nationalism‘ by Florian Schneider
‘New forms of cultural nationalism? American and British Indians in the Trump and Brexit Twittersphere‘ by Eviane Leidig, Bharath Ganesh, and Jonathan Bright

Dr. Eviane Leidig is a Research Fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) in The Hague, Netherlands. Her research focuses on the far-right, gender, and online radicalization, recruitment, and propaganda, as well as online governance. Her regional expertise includes India, North America, and Europe. She has published in Nations & Nationalism, Patterns of Prejudice, Media & Communication, Religions, and Routledge, and has edited two volumes on the radical right (Ibidem-verlag). She is a co-editor and co-founder of a new book series, ‘Global Studies of the Far Right’, at Manchester University Press. Eviane is an affiliate at the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo; an Associate Fellow at the Global Network on Extremism & Technology (GNET); and was a founding member of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR). She has given talks for policymakers such as the U.S. State Department, European Commission, national and regional intelligence agencies, and law enforcement. She is regularly featured in international media outlets such as Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, The Independent, and Radio Free Europe. Her forthcoming book is on far-right female social media influencers.
Florian Schneider, PhD, Sheffield University, is Senior University Lecturer in the Politics of Modern China at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies. He is managing editor of Asiascape: Digital Asia, director of the Leiden Asia Centre, and the author of three books: Staging China: the Politics of Mass Spectacle (Leiden University Press, 2019, recipient of the ICAS Book Prize 2021 Accolades), China’s Digital Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 2018), and Visual Political Communication in Popular Chinese Television Series (Brill, 2013, recipient of the 2014 EastAsiaNet book prize). In 2017, he was awarded the Leiden University teaching prize for his innovative work as an educator. His research interests include questions of governance, political communication, and digital media in China, as well as international relations in the East-Asian region.
Cathrine Thorleifsson (b.1982) is a Researcher at the Centre for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo. Cathrine holds a PhD in Anthropology from the London School of Economics and Political Science (2012). She has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork amongst far right activists in Europe, Israel and cyberspace. The past decade she has been researching and writing on nationalism, belonging, racisms and far right politics. Her recent books include: Nationalist responses to the crises in Europe: old and new hatreds (Routledge 2019) and Nationalism and the Politics of Fear in Israel (I.B. Tauris 2015). Cathrine has studied Arabic at the University of Damascus and Hebrew at the University of Haifa. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. In addition to her academic pursuits, Cathrine has carried out consultancy work for the UNDP, the World Bank, the European Commission and a number of ministries on the dynamics of far right radicalization. Cathrine frequently provides expert analysis for policy makers as well as print and broadcast media.
Dr Krisztina Lajosi is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Amsterdam. Her main research area is nationalism and transnationalism studies, with a special focus on the intersections between the history of culture, media, and political thought. Her expertise is 19th-century nation-building movements and the cultural dimensions of European nationalism. Her main publications include the book Staging the Nation: Opera and Nationalism (Brill, 2018) and the edited volumes The Matica and Beyond: Cultural Associations and Nationalism in Europe (Brill, 2020) and Choral Societies and Nationalism in Europe (Brill, 2015). From 2011-2016 she was the leader of a research project funded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (KNAW) on “National Music and Cultural Transfer in Europe.” She is currently working on a project about representations of the “Gypsy” in European culture. Website: http://www.uva.nl/profiel/l/a/k.k.lajosi/k.k.lajosi.html
Prof. Pál Nyíri holds the chair of Global History from an Anthropological Perspective at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He pursued undergraduate studies of chemistry in Moscow, Budapest, and New Jersey, followed by graduate training in Asian studies in Oregon. He also had research fellowships in Oxford, Budapest, and Berlin, and has taught at Macquarie University in Sydney. His research area includes human mobility (particularly migration) and the cultural politics surrounding its management and containment. He is especially interested in Chinese nationalism, the politics of immigration in Eastern Europe, and comparative approaches to Eastern Europe and China. Website: https://research.vu.nl/en/persons/pal-nyiri

The evolution of nationalisms
2021-10-28 17:00 - 18:30 (Europe/Paris) | Online
Will Kerr’s new book, Darwinian Social Evolution and Social Change: The Evolution of Nationalisms introduces the value of a Darwinian social evolutionary approach to understanding social change. We focus on how Will applies that approach to the study of nationalism.
Darwinian Social Evolution and Social Change: The Evolution of Nationalisms is published by Palgrave Macmillan https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030779986. A discount code will be given out at the event.
With Will Kerr (University of Derby), Atsuko Ichijo (Kingston University), and Siniša Malešević (UCD)
Join us on Facebook Live and YouTube Live. Members will receive a link to join in on Zoom.

Ethnographic Methods and the Study of Nationalism
2021-10-11 16:30 - 18:00 (Europe/Paris) | Zoom
What are the advantages and challenges of studying nationalism and national identity through ethnographic methods? What does it get at, and what might it miss? Continuing ASEN’s interest in diverse methodological approaches to nationalism, in this webinar four scholars of nationalism who have used ethnographic methods in their research explore and reflect on these issues. With Ellie Knott (LSE), Charles Leddy-Owen (University of Portsmouth), Jon Fox (University of Bristol), and Jonathan Hearn (University of Edinburgh).
Join us on Facebook Live and YouTube Live. Members will receive a link to join in on Zoom.

Race and Nation
2021-07-15 15:00 - 16:30 UTC | Online
What is race, and what is the relationship between race and nation? How have differences in human physical appearance been interpreted, in different human societies, and how have they influenced social and national alignment/exclusion in time and space? Wow can the academy a) contribute to a better understanding of the power of the concept of race in contemporary Western politics and b) maintain the boundaries between politics and science? We look at these questions and more with Swati Chawla (University of Virginia), John Solomos (University of Warwick), and Peter Mentzel (Liberty Fund), and chaired by Athena Leoussi (University of Reading).
Join us on Facebook Live or YouTube Live – members will receive an invitation by email on the day to join the Zoom call.

Where's sport in (researching) the nation?
2021-06-07 15:30 - 16:30 UTC | Online
Following a lengthy discussion on Twitter debating the peculiar absence of sport related topics from both big international Nationalism Studies conferences as well as the rather peripheral role the topic has been having within leading academic journals in the field, ASEN is delighted to present the first of two events looking at nationalism and sport (and just in time for the Euros!).
With Alan Bairner (Loughborough), Atsuko Ichijo (Kingston), Jon Fox (Bristol), and Richard Arnold (Muskingum). Chaired by Dario Brentin (UCL). Join us on Facebook Live or YouTube Live – members will receive an invite to join in on Zoom.

Quantitative measurement of ethnic and national identity
2021-04-27 15:30 - 16:30 UTC | Online
We bring the authors of an exchange on ‘Quantitative Measurement of Ethnic and National Identity’ recently published in Nations and Nationalism together to discuss their writings – Daniel Bochsler, Elliott Green, Erin Jenne, Harris Mylonas, and Andreas Wimmer, with Tamara Pavasović Trošt as discussant. Join us on Facebook Live or YouTube Live – members will receive an invite to join on Zoom.
Abstract
In recent decades, there has been a noticeable increase in the use of quantitative techniques in the study of ethnicity and nationalism, without, however, a sufficient amount of reflection on how these techniques have contributed to our understanding of ethnic and national identities. As such, in this exchange three sets of authors answer questions about the degree to which it is possible to use quantitative data to measure ethnic and national identities, which types of methods are most suitable in measuring these identities and what the major research findings of this quantitative research are that were not possible using qualitative approaches.

Round Table on Nationalism and Crisis
2021-04-08 18:00 - 19:30 UTC | Online
Part of the 2021 ASEN Conference on Nationalism and Crisis.
1800UTC: Round Table with Lenka Buštíková, Judith Byfield, Dan Slater, and Miguel Centeno
Global perspectives on nationalism and crisis
1925UTC: Conference close
Join on Facebook Live or YouTube Live. Members and conference pass holders will receive emails to join on Zoom.

Bart Bonikowski: Foregrounding Nationalism in Theories of Radical-Right Success
2021-04-08 15:00 - 16:30 UTC | Online
Part of the 2021 ASEN Conference on Nationalism and Crisis.
1500UTC: Plenary with Bart Bonikowski
“Foregrounding Nationalism in Theories of Radical-Right Success”
Join on Facebook Live or YouTube Live. Members and conference pass holders will receive emails to join on Zoom.

Cynthia Miller-Idriss: The Global Far Right
2021-04-07 16:30 - 18:00 UTC | Online
Part of the 2021 ASEN Conference on Nationalism and Crisis.
1630UTC: Plenary with Cynthia Miller-Idriss
“The Global Far Right”
Join on Facebook Live or YouTube Live. Members and conference pass holders will receive emails to join on Zoom.

Jasbir K. Puar: Rethinking Homonationalism (Redux) as Homocapitalism
2021-04-06 14:45 - 16:30 UTC | Online
Part of the 2021 ASEN Conference on Nationalism and Crisis.
1445UTC: Conference Welcome
Jonathan Hearn (ASEN President)
Isadora Dullaert & Andi Haxhiu (Conference Co-chairs)
1500UTC: Plenary with Jasbir K. Puar
“Rethinking Homonationalism (Redux) as Homocapitalism”
Join on Facebook Live or YouTube Live. Members and conference pass holders will receive emails to join on Zoom.

ASEN Conference 2021
2021-04-06 - 2021-04-08 | Online

The Ernest Gellner Lecture 2021: Nationalism and the Crisis of Global Modernity
2021-04-05 15:00 - 16:00 UTC | Online
The Ernest Gellner Lecture 2021 will be given by Prof. Prasenjit Duara on ‘Nationalism and the Crisis of Global Modernity’ on 5th April 2021 at 1100EST/1500UTC/1600 London (check this time in your city). It will be livestreamed on Facebook and YouTube; members and conference pass holders will also be able to join in on Zoom.
Abstract
“Whether or not there is a direct causal relationship, nationalism is at the heart of all the crises in the modern world and becomes entangled in its effects. As the fundamental source of authority for all modes of governance in the world, we are beholden to its capacity to resolve these cascading crises. I have long argued that its core confessional and anarchic constitutive form does not afford this capaciousness. It is plain to see this in how the WHO is being hampered in the present pandemic by powerful national interests.
“I argue that the nation form is the ‘epistemic engine’ driving the globally circulatory and doxic Enlightenment ideal of the conquest of nature and perpetual growth that sustains the runaway technosphere. The cascading crises that we have already witnessed in this century – financial, economic, epidemic and climatological—are rooted significantly in this technosphere. At the same time, we will have to find our way through and out of these forms to secure a sustainable planet. Drawing from a paradigm of ‘oceanic temporality’ to grasp counter-finalities generated by the epistemic engine I explore the interstitial spaces and counter-flows of social movements that are seeking to develop a post-Enlightenment and a planetary, rather than a global, cosmology.”
About Prasenjit Duara
Prasenjit Duara is the Oscar Tang Chair of East Asian Studies at Duke University. He was born and educated in India and received his PhD in Chinese history from Harvard University. He was previously Professor and Chair of the Dept of History and Chair of the Committee on Chinese Studies at the University of Chicago (1991-2008). Subsequently, he became Raffles Professor of Humanities and Director, Asia Research Institute at National University of Singapore (2008-2015).
In 1988, he published Culture, Power and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942 (Stanford Univ Press) which won the Fairbank Prize of the AHA and the Levenson Prize of the AAS, USA. Among his other books are Rescuing History from the Nation (U Chicago 1995), Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (Rowman 2003) and most recently, The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future (Cambridge 2014). He has edited Decolonization: Now and Then (Routledge, 2004) and co-edited A Companion to Global Historical Thought with Viren Murthy and Andrew Sartori (John Wiley, 2014). His work has been widely translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean and the European languages.
About the Ernest Gellner Lecture
The Ernest Gellner Lecture was established in 1996 to commemorate his enormous contributions to the field of nationalism studies and is sponsored by Nations and Nationalism. It traditionally takes place on the eve of the ASEN Conference.

Digital Nationalism
2021-03-23 16:00 - 17:00 UTC | Online
Benedict Anderson’s idea of ‘imagined communities’ and the concept of print capitalism have remained among the most important theories in the study of nationalism. The traditional printed word is increasingly replaced by the electronic; how does the advance of digital technology affect nationalism? To discuss this, we welcome the authors of the forthcoming Nations and Nationalism themed section on digital nationalism, César Jiménez‐Martínez, J Paul Goode, Guzel Yusupova, Peter Rutland, Aya Yadlin‐Segal, Sabina Mihelj, and Ivan Kozachenko. Chaired by Dr Gëzim Krasniqi, Lecturer in Nationalism and Political Sociology, University of Edinburgh.
Join us Facebook Live or YouTube Live. Members will receive an invitation via email to join in on Zoom.
The articles are

Introduction: Transformation of nationalism and diaspora in the digital age (open access)
Guzel Yusupova Peter Rutland
Digital nationalism: Understanding the role of digital media in the rise of ‘new’ nationalism (open access)
Sabina Mihelj César Jiménez‐Martínez
Artificial intelligence and the future of nationalism
J Paul Goode
Articulating Persian identities between Iran and Israel: On nationality, diasporas, and lived ethnicities in online media
Aya Yadlin‐Segal
Transformed by contested digital spaces? Social media and Ukrainian diasporic ‘selves’ in the wake of the conflict with Russia
Ivan Kozachenko

The UK after Brexit
2021-03-04 18:00 - 19:30 UTC | Online
How will the fact of Brexit, the debate around Brexit, and the changes still to come from Brexit affect nationalisms in the UK?
With Professor Anand Menon, Director of UK in a Changing Europe; Professor Katy Hayward of Queen’s University Belfast and senior fellow at UK in a Changing Europe; and Professor Nicola McEwen of the University of Edinburgh and co-director of the Centre for Constitutional Change. Chaired by Professor Daphne Halikiopoulou, Vice-President of ASEN and Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Reading.
Join us Facebook Live or YouTube Live. Members will receive an invitation via email to join in on Zoom.

Nourishing the Nation: Food as National Identity in Catalonia
2021-01-27 16:00 - 17:30 UTC | Online
Venetia Johannes sits down with Javier Carbonell to discuss her new book, Nourishing the Nation: Food as National Identity in Catalonia. Join us on Facebook Live or YouTube Live from 1600UTC on 27th January. Check this time in your city.
About Venetia
Dr Venetia Johannes is a post-doctoral research affiliate at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford. She was co-editor of The Emergence of National Food: The Dynamics of Food and Nationalism (Bloomsbury, 2019), and has published chapters and articles on Catalonia, food, nationalism, and heritage.
About the book
“In the early twenty-first century, nationalism has seen a surprising resurgence across the Western world. In the Catalan Autonomous Community in northeastern Spain, this resurgence has been most apparent in widespread support for Catalonia’s pro-independence movement, and the popular assertion of Catalan symbols, culture and identity in everyday life. Nourishing the Nation provides an ethnographic account of the everyday experience of national identity in Catalonia, using an essential, everyday object of consumption: food. As a crucial element of Catalan cultural life, a focus on food provides unique insight into the lived realities of Catalan nationalism, and how Catalans experience and express their national identity today.”

Territorial Politics and the Party System in Spain
2020-12-17 17:30 - 18:30 UTC | Online
A recording of this event is available for members.
Caroline Gray sits down with Javier Carbonell to discuss her new book, Territorial Politics and the Party System in Spain. Join us on Facebook Live or YouTube Live from 1730UTC on December 17th. Click here to check the time in your city.
About Caroline
Lecturer in Politics and Spanish at Aston University. She specialises in the politics and culture of Spain, focusing on nationalist movements and political decentralisation, as well as the political consequences of the global financial crisis. Having studied Spanish literature as a Modern Languages undergraduate at the University of Oxford, followed later by a PhD in Politics on nationalist movements in Spain, she is particularly interested in how an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Spain can deepen our understanding of the country.
About the book
Caroline’s book, Territorial Politics and the Party System in Spain, is published by Routledge.
Across Western Europe, the global financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath not only brought economic havoc but also, in turn, intense political upheaval. Many of the political manifestations of the crisis seen in other Western and especially Southern European countries also hit Spain, where challenger parties caused unprecedented parliamentary fragmentation, resulting in four general elections in under four years from 2015 onwards. Yet Spain, a decentralised state where extensive powers are devolved to 17 regions known as ‘autonomous communities’, also stood out from its neighbours due to the importance of the territorial dimension of politics in shaping the political expression of the crisis.
This book explains how and why the territorial dimension of politics contributed to shaping party system continuity and change in Spain in the aftermath of the financial crisis, with a particular focus on party behaviour. The territorial dimension encompasses the demands for ever greater autonomy or even sovereignty coming from certain parties within the historic regions of the Basque Country, Catalonia and, to a lesser extent, Galicia. It also encompasses where these historic regions sit within the broader dynamics of intergovernmental relations across Spain’s 17 autonomous communities in total, and how these dynamics contribute to shaping party strategies and behaviour in Spain. Such features became particularly salient in the aftermath of the financial crisis since this coincided with, and indeed accelerated, the rise of the independence movement in Catalonia.
Follow Caroline on Twitter at @carolinemgray.

The Struggle Over Borders: Cosmopolitanism and Communitarianism
2020-11-20 17:30 - 18:30 UTC | Online
A recording of this event is available for members.
Pieter de Wilde, Michael Zürn, Ruud Koopmans & Oliver Strijbis – The Struggle Over Borders: Cosmopolitanism and Communitarianis
About the authors
Pieter de Wilde is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Political Science at NTNU, looking at political conflict over European integration and globalisation. Michael Zurn is Director of the Global Governance research unit at the WZB Berlin Social Science Centre and Professor of International Relations at the Free University Berlin. Ruud Koopmans is Director of the Migration, Integration, Transnationalization research unit at the WZB Berlin Social Science Centre. Oliver Strijbis is SNSF Assistant Professor at the University of Zurich.
About the book
Their book, The Struggle Over Borders: Cosmopolitanism and Communitarianism, is published by Cambridge University Press.
Globalization has unleashed a torrent of questions and deepened political fault lines, creating rifts between elites and mass publics and space for the rise of populism. Amid debates about open and closed visions of society, The Struggle over Borders: Cosmopolitanism and Communitarianism lends a fresh perspective on hotly contested issues of current political debates over globalization and the future of politics.
The authors analyze public and elite opinion, party politics, and mass-media conversations on climate change, human rights, migration, regional integration, and trade. They turn their gaze on institutional conflicts within the European Union and the United Nations, as well as examining national debates in the USA, Germany, Poland, Turkey, and Mexico.
At a time when many are trying to take stock of tectonic shifts in global political discourse, this book comprehensively maps the current realignment of politics in relation to globalization, linking empirical analysis to key insights from political theories on cosmopolitanism and communitarianism.
Follow Pieter on Twitter at @pieter_dewilde and Ruud at @ruud_koop_mans.
