Harris Mylonas and Maya Tudor | Varieties of Nationalism
2023-11-07 16:15 - 17:30 UTC | Online
We sit down with Harris Mylonas and Maya Tudor to discuss their new book, Varieties of Nationalism. Join us live on Facebook and YouTube; members will receive an invitation to join on Zoom.
About Varieties of Nationalism
Nationalism has long been a normatively and empirically contested concept, associated with democratic revolutions and public goods provision, but also with xenophobia, genocide, and wars. Moving beyond facile distinctions between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ nationalisms, the authors argue that nationalism is an empirically variegated ideology. Definitional disagreements, Eurocentric conceptualizations, and linear associations between ethnicity and nationalism have hampered our ability to synthesize insights. This Element proposes that nationalism can be broken down productively into parts based on three key questions: (1) Does a nation exist? (2) How do national narratives vary? (3) When do national narratives matter? The answers to these questions generate five dimensions along which nationalism varies: elite fragmentation and popular fragmentation of national communities; ascriptiveness and thickness of national narratives; and salience of national identities.
About Harris
Harris Mylonas is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. His work contributes to the understanding of states’ management of diversity that may originate from national minorities, immigrants, diasporas, or refugees. He is particularly interested in the role of decision makers’ perceptions about foreign involvement in their domestic affairs and the impact these perceptions have on the planning and implementation of state policies. He is teaching undergraduate courses on Nationalism, Patriotism, and European Integration, and graduate courses on Nation-Building in the Balkans, Nationalism and Nation-Building, and Qualitative Research Methods.
Read more about Harris at GWU or follow him on Twitter.
About Maya
Maya Tudor is Associate Professor of Government and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. Her research investigates the origins of stable, democratic and effective states across the developing world, with a particular emphasis on South Asia. She was educated at Stanford University (BA in Economics) and Princeton University (MPA in Development Studies and PhD in Politics and Public Policy). She has held fellowships at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Oxford University’s Centre for the Study of Inequality and Democracy, and Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.
Read more about Maya at Oxford or follow her on Twitter.

Historical Memory in Greece
2023-11-29 16:30 - 18:00 UTC | Online
Join us on 29th November as we sit down to discuss Christina Koulouri’s new book, Historical Memory in Greece 1821-1930, with the author herself, Maria Kaliambou, Rainer Liedtke, and Athena Leoussi. We’ll be live on YouTube and Facebook; members will receive an invitation to join the Zoom call.
About Historical Memory in Greece
Historical Memory in Greece presents a social and cultural history of collective memory in modern Greece during the first century of state independence, contributing to the debate over the relationship between memory and identity. We’ll be live on YouTube and Facebook; members will receive an email to join the Zoom call.
It discusses how modern Greek society commemorated its distant and recent pasts, both real and imagined, namely antiquity, Byzantium, the Greek Revolution and the Asia Minor Catastrophe; how cultural memory was shaped by the various war experiences (victory, defeat, mass death and mourning, refugeedom); and how memory politics became arenas of social and political strife. Historical painting, monuments, historical pageantry, tableaux vivants, national anniversaries, performances of ancient drama and revivals of ancient games are analyzed as instances where the past was visualized, represented, performed and “consumed”.
An explosion in public history has taken place over the last decades around the world, with a veritable flood of commemorations, anniversaries and “memory wars”. As more and more social groups claim the “right to remember”, public discourse and polemics have arisen at the same time that traumatic memory has become a field of international academic research. In the arena of public history, historical memory is being constructed through the sentimental, irrational reception of mythological narratives told through images.
Historical Memory in Greece is published by Routledge.
About Christina Koulouri
Christina Koulouri is Professor in Modern and Contemporary History and Rector of Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences (Athens, Greece). From 2013-2017 she was the Dean of the School of Political Sciences, Panteion University. She studied at the University of Athens (Department of History and Archaeology), the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and Paris I – Panthéon – Sorbonne where she also received her PhD. She was Visiting Research Fellow at Université de Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne (2010), Princeton University (2017) and the University of Regensburg (2019). Awarded with the Nikos Svoronos Prize (1993), the Delphi Prize (2012), and the Vikelas Plaque (2018). Author of several books and articles on the teaching of history, the history of historiography, national identity, memory, public history, and the history of sports and the Olympic Games. Her last book (2020) received the National Essay Prize in Greece.
About Maria Kaliambou
Maria Kaliambou is Senior Lector at the Hellenic Studies Program at Yale University. She earned her B.A. in History and Archaeology at the University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and her Ph.D. in European Ethnology/Folklore Studies at the University of Munich, Germany. She held post-doctoral positions at the University Charles-de-Gaulle Lille 3 and at Princeton University. In 2006, her dissertation received the Lutz Röhrich Prize in Germany as the best dissertation in oral literature, and in 2011 the European Commission elected her the Erasmus Student Ambassador of Greece. Her research focuses on the dialogue between folklore and book history, particularly in the diaspora. She is also interested in foreign language pedagogy, especially the teaching of Modern Greek. She publishes in Greek, German and English. In 2006 she published her first monograph with the title Home – Faith – Family: Transmission of Values in Greek Popular Booklets of Tales (1870-1970) (in German). In 2015 she published The Routledge Modern Greek Reader, Greek Folktales for Learning Modern Greek, Routledge, an anthology of Greek folktales for the foreign language classroom. In 2023 her edited volume “The Greek Revolution and the Greek Diaspora in the United States” was published both in English (Routledge) and in Greek (Asini). She is currently working on her next monograph, tentatively titled “The Book Culture of Greek Americans”.
About Rainer Liedtke
Rainer Liedtke is Professor of European History of the 19th and 20th Centuries at Regensburg. Since October 2014, holder of a W3 professorship in European History of the 19th and 20th Centuries at Universität Regensburg. 2013-2014 research associate at the Institute of History of TU Darmstadt. 2013 interim professor (representative of Prof. Dr. med. Jens-Ivo Engels) at the Institute of History of TU Darmstadt. 2009-2013 visiting professor and research assistant at the Institute of History of the TU Darmstadt and associate professor at the Historical Institute of the Justus-Liebig-University-Gießen. 2006-2009 Research associate and associate professor at the Historical Institute of the Justus-Liebig-Universität-Gießen, DFG project: “Zivilgesellschaft und familiäre Regulationsmechanismen: Die Großstadtwerdung Athens im 20. Jahrhundert als Testfall für das Konzept der ‘europäischen Stadt”. 2004-2006 interim assistant professor at the Department of History of Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel (Chair Prof. Dr. Christoph Cornelißen) and private lecturer at the Historical Institute of Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. 2004 habilitation in modern and recent history at the Justus Liebig Universität Gießen on “Kommunikationswege und Informationstransfer im europäischen Privatbankwesen des 19. Jahrhunderts”. 1991-95 doctoral thesis in modern history at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University: “Jewish Welfare in Hamburg and Manchester, 1850-1914”.
About Athena Leoussi (chair)
Athena Leoussi is a founder of ASEN and currently a member of the steering committee, having held various other roles in ASEN and with Nations and Nationalism, of which she is a Founder Editor. Her teaching and research interests include the history, theories and problems of nationalism and national identity; the comparative study of the peoples of Europe, including 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. As a result of her research interest in in the revival of the classical Greek body in modern Europe, she organised, together with Ian Jenkins, the British Museum exhibition, ‘Defining Beauty: The Body in Ancient Greek Art’.

Eviane Leidig | The women of the far right: social media influencers and online radicalisation
2023-12-06 16:00 - 17:00 UTC
We sit down with Dr Eviane Leidig, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at Tilburg University, to discuss her new book, The women of the far right: social media influencers and online radicalisation. Join us live on Facebook and YouTube; members will receive an invitation to join on Zoom.
About The Women of the Far Right
Eviane Leidig offers an in-depth look into the world of far-right women influencers, exploring the digital lives they cultivate as they seek new recruits for white nationalism. Going beyond stereotypes of the typical male white supremacist, she uncovers how young, attractive women are playing key roles as propagandists, organizers, fundraisers, and entrepreneurs. Leidig argues that far-right women are marketing themselves as authentic and accessible in order to reach new followers and spread a hateful ideology. This insidious—and highly gendered—strategy takes advantage of the structure of social media platforms, where far-right women influencers’ content is shared with and promoted to mainstream audiences. Providing much-needed expertise on gender and the far right, this timely and accessible book also details online and offline approaches to countering extremism. The Women of the Far Right is published by Columbia University Press.
About Eviane Leidig
Eviane Leidig is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at Tilburg University. She is affiliated with the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo, the Global Network on Extremism and Technology in London, and the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague. She has been featured by The Independent, Al Jazeera, BBC, Australia Broadcasting Corporation, and Bellingcat, among others.
Read more about Eviane at her website or follow her on Twitter.

Defensive Nationalism: explaining the rise of populism and fascism in the 21st century
2024-01-10 16:00 - 18:00 UTC | Online
Daphne Halikiopoulou sits down with Beth Rabinowitz to discuss her new book, Defensive Nationalism: explaining the rise of populism and fascism in the 21st century, published with Oxford University Press. As ever, we’ll be live on Facebook and YouTube, with members receiving an invite to join on Zoom.
Handouts
Flow Chart | Table 1
About Defensive Nationalism
Why have atavistic political ideologies taken hold in the most technologically advanced societies? Defensive Nationalism argues that the irrationalism and hatred that marked the early 20th is recurring in the 21st centuries, and for the same reasons. Combining Karl Polanyi’s concept of the “double movement” with Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of innovation, the book traces how the explosive politics of both eras stem from the very technological changes that brought humankind to its highest levels of sophistication. In the mid-19th century, it was railroads, steam ships, automated printing presses, and telegraphy; in the mid-20th century, turbo jets, container ships, satellites, and computers. These magical modern innovations seemed to hold the promise of global peace and prosperity. But the mid-century liberal trust in international cooperation was quickly eclipsed by something much darker. The new economies of speed and scale created by the Industrial and Digital Revolutions dislodged the moorings of societies. Countries were made vulnerable to global economic crises, existing systems of production were uprooted, mass migrations accelerated, and uniquely modern forms of mass media threatened the social and political order. These same changes also produced never-before-seen modes of international terrorism—anarchist bombings and assassinations in the late-eighteen hundreds, and Islamist suicide bombings and beheadings in the late-nineteen hundreds. Political actors were able to capitalize on the growing disorientation and fear. Nations began to turn inward as left-wing populist and right-wing proto-fascist movements took hold across the United States and Europe. An era of “defensive nationalism” had commenced.
About Beth Rabinowitz
Beth is Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers. Her research interests cross a number of areas, including political institutions, political leadership, comparative political economy, nationalism and ethnic conflict, military institutionalization, decentralization, and state building.
A diverse set of experiences have shaped her approach to research. In the early 1990s I backpacked around Africa for sixteen months. She was most affected by my experiences in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), where she spent three months in the interior and witnessed some of the effects of a failed State. She saw highways that had decayed into mud traps, banks with no currency, and an economy so decimated that urban workers were forced to ‘return’ to the bush to grow crops to sell in Kinshasa with no knowledge of how to live do so. She found myself asking: How could a State just crumble away? She wanted to understand how to place what I had seen: what was ‘African,’ what was ‘colonial heritage,’ and what was ‘neo-imperialism.’ When she began graduate studies at the University of Chicago, she found myself drawn to all courses on Africa.
Her extensive travels and exposure to different disciplines (with my undergraduate studies in philosophy and my interdisciplinary Masters studies) solidified my conviction that the evolution of political systems must be understood in terms of the cultural and institutional contexts in which they develop. However, as my knowledge of African politics evolved, I came to see that institutional analyses were not effectively accounting for different political outcomes in the region. I have since tried to develop an approach that draws upon both historical institutionalism as well as analyses of leadership and agency.
About Daphne Halikiopoulou
Daphne Halikiopoulou is Chair in Comparative Politics at the University of York, having previously been Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Reading. She gained her PhD from LSE (2007) where she also worked as a Fellow in Comparative Politics (2009-2012).
Daphne is interested in party politics and voting behaviour with a focus on the far right, populism and nationalism in Europe. She is the author of Understanding right-wing populism and what to do about it (with Tim Vlandas), 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, West European Politics, Journal of Common Market Studies, European Political Science Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Government and Opposition, Environmental Politics and Nations and Nationalism among others. Her article ‘Risks, Costs and Labour Markets: Explaining Cross-National Patterns of Far-Right Party Success in European Parliament Elections’ (with Tim Vlandas) has been awarded Best Paper from the American Political Science Association (APSA).

The Greek Revolution in the Age of Revolution
2024-02-05 18:00 - 19:30 UTC | Graham Wallas Room LSE, LSE, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom
This event is free and open to all, but pre-registration is required. Please email us to register.
Join Paschalis Kitromilides, John Hutchinson, and Athena Leoussi to discuss Paschalis’s book, The Greek Revolution in the Age of Revolutions (1776-1848). The event takes places on 5th February from 1800 at the Graham Wallas Room, LSE, and will be streamed live on Facebook and YouTube.
About the book
This volume aims to demonstrate the significance of the Greek liberation struggle to international history, and to highlight how it was a turning point that signalled the revival of revolution in Europe after the defeat of the French Revolution in 1815. It argues that the sacrifices of rebellious Greeks paved the way for other resistance movements in European politics, culminating in the ‘spring of European peoples’ in 1848. Richly researched and innovative in approach, this volume also considers the diplomatic and transnational aspects of the insurrection, and examines hitherto unexplored dimensions of revolutionary change in the Greek world. The Greek Revolution in the Age of Revolutions (1776-1848) is published by Routledge.
About the speakers
Paschalis Kitromilides is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Athens and a member of the Academy of Athens, where he holds the chair of the History of Political Thought. He has held visiting appointments at Harvard and Brandeis Universities, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, and the European University Institute. The author of more than fifty books and two hundred and sixty articles, his works have been published in Russian, Romanian, Serbian, and Bulgarian as well as English and Greek.

Athena Leoussi is Associate Professor in the Department of Languages and Cultures at the University of Reading and a Visiting Senior Fellow in the Government Department at the LSE. She is a founder of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism and a founding editor of Nations and Nationalism. Her research interests include the history, theories and problems of nationalism and national identity; the comparative study of the peoples of Europe, including 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. She organised, together with Ian Jenkins, the British Museum exhibition, ‘Defining Beauty: The Body in Ancient Greek Art’.

John Hutchinson is Reader in Nationalism at the LSE. He has authored and edited eleven books in the field of Nationalism, including The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism (1987), Modern Nationalism (1994) and Nations as Zones of Conflict (2005) and Nationalism and War (2017), which was nominated for the ENMISA book prize and the Hedley Bull Book Prize in International Relations. He is currently Vice-President of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism and Co-Editor-in Chief of Nations and Nationalism. In addition, he sits on the advisory boards of the Institute for the Advancement of the Social Sciences, Boston University, and of the Study Platform on Interlocking Nationalisms, University of Amsterdam. He is working on a book, provisionally entitled ‘The Herderian Explosion’.

The Army, the Nation, Nuclear Annihilation
2024-02-28 18:00 - 19:30 UTC | PAN9.05, Pankhurst House, LSE, 1 Clement's Inn, London, WC2A 2AZ, United Kingdom
The Anthony D. Smith Fellowship Seminar is given by the 2023 Fellow, Jack Matlack, on ‘The Army, the Nation, Nuclear Annihilation: Constructing ‘Western’ identity in German-American NATO training exercises of the Cold War’. Join us in person in room PAN9.05 at the London School of Economics, or join us on Facebook or YouTube. Members will receive a link to join on Zoom.
Abstract
Beginning in the Cold War, joint training exercises between the German and US armies involved tens of thousands of soldiers, colliding in imaginative play of plausible WW3 scenarios on the open fields and farms of West Germany. Proceeding from the reports and recollections of the two officer corps, I contend that ‘Western’ identity in the military context of NATO exercises was not principally the product of Christian conviviality, shared democratic ethos (Winkler, 2007), or civilisational public rhetoric (Jackson, 2006). Rather, I call attention to precise military tactics and operational assumptions employed by both armies to construct mock war. By interrogating the underlying logic of training exercises, I argue that the army as the ‘people in arms’ (Moran and Waldron, 2003) embodied the German and American nations through their (re)enactment of World War 3. When the US Army trained in defending Germany, the American nation incrementally embraced the identity of the preponderant superpower (Bavaj and Steber, 2015). Conversely, mock war compelled Germans, for the first time in the 20th century, to surrender national notions of self reliance. Both nations adopted the standpoint of shared security and the ‘coupling of fates’ as an essential pillar of the Atlantic pact. Through the recurring rehearsal of exercises, ‘Western’ identity emerges in this context as synthetic, ultimately channeled through lenses of German and American national identity.
About Jack
Jon-Wyatt ‘Jack’ Matlack is a PhD student at the GSOSES and a doctoral researcher at the Leibniz ScienceCampus at the University of Regensburg. He received the 2023 Anthony D. Smith Visiting Fellowship at LSE IDEAS for his research proposal, “Maneuvering Westward”, concerning training exercises of the US Army and German Army in the Cold War.
For more information about the Anthony D. Smith Visiting Fellowship, please visit asen.ac.uk/smith.

The new nationalism in America and beyond
2024-03-20 18:00 - 19:30 UTC
The 2024 Nations and Nationalism debate, supported by LSE IDEAS, is on ‘The new nationalism in America and beyond: the deep roots of ethnic nationalism in the digital age’ by Robert Schertzer and Eric T. Woods. We will be live on Facebook and YouTube, with members receiving an invite to join on Zoom.
Our speakers, Sophie Duchesne, Philip Gorski and Cynthia Miller-Idriss join the authors, Robert Schertzer and Eric Woods, for a debate on their book which analyses the social media campaigns of Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, and the Brexit campaigners, showing how today’s new nationalists are cultivating support from white majorities by tapping into their history and culture.
Across the West, there has been a resurgence of ethnic nationalism, populism, and anti-immigrant sentiment – a phenomenon that many commentators have called the “new nationalism.” In The New Nationalism in America and Beyond, Robert Schertzer and Eric Taylor Woods seek to understand why the bastions of liberalism are proving to be fertile ground for a decidedly illiberal ideology. To do so, they examine the social media campaigns of three of the most successful exemplars of the new nationalism: Donald Trump in the US, Marine Le Pen in France, and Brexit in the UK. Schertzer and Woods show how today’s new nationalists are cultivating support from white majorities by drawing from long-standing myths and symbols to construct an image of the nation as an ethnic community. Their cutting-edge and multidisciplinary approach combines elements of political science, sociology, history, and communication and media studies, to show how leaders today are updating the historical foundations of ethnic nationalism for the digital age.
Meet the speakers and chair
Sophie Duchesne is a political sociologist at CNRS / Centre Emile Durkheim, Sciences Po Bordeaux. Her research is in citizenship and individualism, and national and European identities. She published “Citoyenneté à la Française” (Paris, Presses de Sciences).
Philip S. Gorski (Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley 1996) is a comparative-historical sociologist with strong interests in theory and methods and in modern and early modern Europe. His empirical work focuses on topics such as state-formation, nationalism, revolution, economic development and secularization with particular attention to the interaction of religion and politics. Other current interests include the philosophy and methodology of the social sciences and the nature and role of rationality in social life. Among his recent publications are “The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Growth of State Power in Early Modern Europe” (Chicago, 2003); “Max Weber’s Economy and Society: A Critical Companio”n (Stanford, 2004); and “The Poverty of Deductivism: A Constructive Realist Model of Sociological Explanation,” Sociological Methodology, 2004. Philip Gorski co-runs the Religion and Politics Colloquium at the Yale MacMillan Center
Cynthia Miller-Idriss is a sociologist and professor in the School of Public Affairs and in the School of Education, American University and runs the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL). Dr. Miller-Idriss has testified several times before the U.S. Congress and regularly briefs policy, security, education and intelligence agencies in the U.S., the United Nations, and other countries on trends in domestic violent extremism and strategies for prevention and disengagement. She is the author, co-author, or co-editor of six academic books, including her most recent books “Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right” (Princeton University Press, 2020) and “The Extreme Gone Mainstream: Commercialization and Far Right Youth Culture in Germany” (Princeton University Press, 2018). She has also published over one hundred peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and essays on nationalism, extremism, education, higher education and internationalization.
Robert Schertzer is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Political Science at the University of Toronto and UTSC. His research and teaching focus on the intersections of three areas: federalism, judicial politics, and ethno-national diversity, with a tendency to look at Canada from a broadly comparative perspective. He is the author of “The Judicial Role in a Diverse Federation: Lessons from the Supreme Court of Canada” (University of Toronto Press, 2016) and “The New Nationalism in American and Beyond” (Oxford University Press, 2022, with Eric Taylor Woods). His work has been published in Nations and Nationalism, Ethnic and Racial Studies, the Canadian Journal of Political Science, Publius, and the International Journal of Constitutional Law. He is also the founding co-editor of The State of Nationalism, an open-access portal for review articles on the study of nationalism.
Eric T. Woods is an Associate Professor in Sociology, School of Society and Culture at the University of Plymouth. His research and teaching examines the intersections of politics, culture, and media – with a particular focus on how these phenomena relate to nationalism. His most recent book (co-authored with Dr Robert Schertzer) is entitled, ‘The New Nationalism in America and Beyond: The Deep Roots of Ethnic Nationalism in the Digital Age‘ (Oxford University Press, 2022). He also researched the cultural politics of Britain’s imperial past, and he has published extensively on Christian-Indigenous relations in Canada, including the 2016 book, ‘A Cultural Sociology of Anglican Mission and the Indian Residential Schools in Canada‘ (Palgrave, 2016). He has also edited several multi-author volumes on these topics, including on the role of rituals in the forging of nations; the potential for cultural sociology to shed new light on nationalism; and on nationalism and conflict management. Alongside his scholarly publications, he is keen to contribute to public debates through venues such as The Conversation and LSE Blogs.
Elliott Green is Professor in Development Studies in the Department of International Development at the LSE. He is currently Director of the department’s PhD program and convener of the MSc Course ‘Key Issues in Development Studies’ (DV442). Elliott has three main research areas: 1) ethnic politics and national identity in Africa, 2) patronage, clientelism and African development, and 3) the political demography of modern Africa. He has conducted fieldwork in Uganda, Tanzania and Botswana, and for several years taught a course entitled ‘Poverty and Development’ at the annual LSE-University of Cape Town Summer School. His research has published in a variety of academic journals, including the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, Economic Development and Cultural Change, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Modern African Studies, Studies in Comparative International Development and World Development, among others. He currently sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Development Studies, Nations and Nationalism and Regional and Federal Studies, and is a series editor for the book series “Politics and Development in Contemporary Africa” published by the International Africa Institute. Outside academia he has briefed the British High Commissioner to Uganda twice (in 2008 and 2010) and regularly writes blog entries for a variety of websites.
More information about the event
The book can be purchased in physical format via online bookshops such as Book depository: New-Nationalism-America-Beyond.
This event is hosted by LSE IDEAS and Nations and Nationalism
Event hashtag: #LSENewNationalism
LSE IDEAS (@lseideas) is LSE’s foreign policy think tank. Through sustained engagement with policymakers and opinion-formers, IDEAS provides a forum that informs policy debate and connects academic research with the practice of diplomacy and strategy.
Nations and Nationalism (@nationalism) is published on behalf of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) in partnership with LSE IDEAS. The journal is published quarterly by Wiley.

Michael Hechter: Status Reversal and its Discontents
2024-03-27 16:00 - 17:30 UTC | Violet Laidlaw Room, 6th Floor, Chrystal MacMillan Building, 15a George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LD, United Kingdom
The University of Edinburgh Department of Sociology, the University of Edinburgh MSc Nationalism in Global Perspective programme, and ASEN present a lecture by Michael Hechter, Arizona State University, on Status Reversal and its Discontents.
The lecture will take place in the Violet Laidlaw Room, 6th Floor, Chrystal MacMillan Building, 15a George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LD – check back soon for a link for free tickets.
We will also be livestreaming the event on Facebook and YouTube.
About Michael Hechter
Michael Hechter received both his AB and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Foundation Professor of Political Science at Arizona State University and a core faculty member of the Center for the Study of Social Dynamics and Complexity. Hechter has previously taught at the Universities of Washington, Arizona, Oxford and Copenhagen. He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences and the Russell Sage Foundation, and was a visiting professor at the Universities of Bergen and Llubljana.
Hechter is the author of numerous books, including Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536-1966 (1975; 1998); Principles of Group Solidarity (1987); Containing Nationalism (2000), Alien Rule (2013), Rational Choice Sociology (2019), and, with Steven Pfaff, The Genesis of Rebellion (2020). He is editor/co-editor of The Microfoundations of Macrosociology (1983); Social Institutions: Their Emergence, Maintenance and Effects (1990); The Origin of Values (1993); Social Norms (2001, 2005); and Theories of Social Order (2003; 2008). His articles have appeared in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Demography, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Rationality and Society, Sociological Theory, European Sociological Review, and many other journals. His writings have been translated into Italian, Japanese, Hungarian, Chinese, Arabic, French, Spanish, Czech and Georgian.
Read more about Michael on his website.

Conference 2024: Nationalism and Memory
2024-04-09 - 2024-04-11
The ASEN Conference will take place at the University of Edinburgh on the subject of ‘nationalism and memory’ from 9th to 11th April 2024. Full information, including the call for papers, is on the conference pages.

Lars-Erik Cederman: The Anthony D. Smith Lecture 2024
2024-04-09 18:00 - 19:00 UTC | Teviot Lecture Theatre, University of Edinburgh
The 2024 Anthony D. Smith Lecture will be given by Lars-Erik Cederman on ‘Nationalism and the Transformation of the State: Border Change, Historical Legacies and Conflict’
The Lecture is public and open to all, and will be streamed on Facebook and YouTube.
Abstract
While it is often assumed that the core debates about nationalism were settled by modernist scholars already in the 1980s, there are reasons to question this theoretical “consensus,” especially since it fails to anticipate the nationalist geopolitics that is currently undermining the liberal world order. Contemporary studies of nationalism typically refrain from conceptualizing politics in spatial terms, while overstating states’ ability to shape national identities irrespective of their ethnic roots, and generally offering little systematic validation of their theoretical claims. To overcome these limitations, it is useful to analyze how nationalism transforms the state, rather than the other way around, with major consequences for border change and conflict patterns. A recent EU-funded research project uses historical maps covering borders of states and ethnic groups in Europe to show how nationalism caused increasing congruence between state and ethno-national borders, and how a lack of congruence increases the risk of conflict. This risk is further increased by “restorative” narratives targeting supposedly lost independence and unity. Further research traces the spread of nationalism through modernization processes driven by railroad expansion until the early 20th century. Yet it would be a mistake to conclude that state partition offers the only, or even the best, solution to nationality problems. Power sharing appears to pacify at least as well as ethno-nationalist border change.
About Lars-Erik Cederman
Lars-Erik Cederman is professor of international conflict research at ETH Zürich. He is the author of Emergent Actors in World Politics: How States and Nations Develop and Dissolve (Princeton University Press, 1997), and co-author of Inequality, Grievances and Civil War (with Kristian Gleditsch and Halvard Buhaug; Cambridge University Press, 2013), and Sharing Power, Securing Peace? Ethnic Inclusion and Civil War (with Simon Hug and Julian Wucherpfennig; Cambridge University Press 2022). He has published many articles in scholarly journals, such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, International Organization, World Politics, American Journal of Sociology, and Science. His main research interests include nationalism, state formation and conflict processes.

How can ASEN hold an online conference?
2024-05-06 16:00 - 18:00 (Europe/Paris) | Online
ASEN would like to hold an online conference, in no small part to give scholars who cannot easily travel to our in-person conference venues the opportunity to present their research. During covid, our annual conference was held entirely online on ‘nationalism and crisis’, and it did allow people from all around the world to take part.
We want to make such an online conference as useful as possible, and that’s where you come in. To start the process, we’d like to you what you think would work, so we’re having a Zoom call to have the conversation, ask what people would want at an online conference, and see if we can make it work.
Things we’re looking at include:

is there a desire to have an online conference?
should the conference have a theme or be an open call for papers on nationalism?
should it be aimed at PhD students or more generally?
how long should the conference last and what should the schedule be?
what do people expect in terms of technology?
how can we facilitate interaction outside of panels?

Plus anything else you would like to cover!
You will need to register in advance at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUud-2vrDIrGdA4kNXh6grkpSB4MT2uhGh5. We are doing it as a drop-in, so please come for as long or short a time as you like – we’re not expecting people to stay for the full two hours!

Summer School 2024
2024-06-10 - 2024-06-16
The ASEN Summer School returns for its third year at the University of Zadar. Applications will open in November 2023.

Nation-states and reactions to Covid in Europe
2024-09-30 16:30 - 18:00 (Europe/Paris) | Online
How did and how do nation-states in Europe react to Covid – the virus itself, the vaccine, and the aftermath? Find out with Siniša Malešević (UCD), Lea David (UCD), Sarah Carol (UCD), & Gordana Uzelac (London Met), who have co-authored four papers on nationalism and Covid on Monday 30th September at 1630 UK time (check this time in your city) – as ever, we will be live on Facebook and YouTube.
Plotting against our nation: COVID-19, nationalisms, and conspiracy theories in five European countries
Pro-social attitudes towards ethno-religious out-groups during the COVID-19 pandemic: A survey experiment in five countries
“My Country First”: Vaccine Nationalism in England?
Heroes, villains and naked nations: micro-solidarity and grounded nationalism in times of crisis
Citations
Malešević, S., Uzelac, G., Carol, S., & David, L. (2024). Plotting against our nation: COVID-19, nationalisms, and conspiracy theories in five European countries. National Identities, 26(2), 141–171.
Carol, S., David, L., Malešević, S., & Uzelac, G. (2024). Pro-social attitudes towards ethno-religious out-groups during the COVID-19 pandemic: A survey experiment in five countries. International Sociology, 39(1), 113-137.
Uzelac, G., Carol, S., David, L., & Malešević, S. (2024). “My Country First”: Vaccine Nationalism in England? Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 30(3), 335–358.
David, L., Carol, S., Malešević, S., & Uzelac, G. (2024). Heroes, villains and naked nations: micro-solidarity and grounded nationalism in times of crisis. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1–22.

Nationalism: A World History
2025-01-15 16:30 - 18:00 UTC | Online
ASEN president Jonathan Hearn sits down with Eric Storm to discuss his new book, Nationalism: A World History for our first event of 2025. We’ll be live on 15th January from 1630UTC (check this time in your city) on Facebook and YouTube, and members will receive an invitation to join the Zoom call.
About the book
In Nationalism, historian Eric Storm sheds light on contemporary nationalist movements by exploring the global evolution of nationalism, beginning with the rise of the nation-state in the eighteenth century through the revival of nationalist ideas in the present day. Storm traces the emergence of the unitary nation-state—which brought citizenship rights to some while excluding a multitude of “others”—and the pervasive spread of nationalist ideas through politics and culture.
Storm shows how nationalism influences the arts and humanities, mapping its dissemination through newspapers, television, and social media. Sports and tourism, too, have helped fashion a world of discrete nations, each with its own character, heroes, and highlights. Nationalism saturates the physical environment, not only in the form of national museums and patriotic statues but also in efforts to preserve cultural heritage, create national parks, invent ethnic dishes and beverages, promote traditional building practices, and cultivate native plants. Nationalism has even been used for selling cars, furniture, and fashion.
By tracing these tendencies across countries, Storm shows that nationalism’s watershed moments were global. He argues that the rise of new nation-states was largely determined by shifts in the international context, that the relationships between nation-states and their citizens largely developed according to global patterns, and that worldwide intellectual trends influenced the nationalization of both culture and environment. Over the centuries, nationalism has transformed both geopolitics and the everyday life of ordinary people.
About Eric Storm
Eric Storm is associate professor of general history at Leiden University. He has been a visiting scholar at the University Complutense of Madrid, Oxford University, and the Free University in Berlin. He is the author of The Culture of Regionalism and The Discovery of El Greco and the coeditor of Writing the History of Nationalism, Colonial Soldiers in Europe, Regionalism in Modern Europe, and World Fairs and the Global Moulding of National Identities.

Mechanisms of National Solidarity
2025-02-06 17:30 - 19:00 UTC
Join us for a panel discussion on the recent themed section in Nations and Nationalism on ‘mechanisms of national solidarity’ with Danny Kaplan, Siniša Malešević, Lea David, Daniel Lainer-Vos, Jon Fox, and Hizky Shoham on 6th February from 1730UTC (check this time in your city) live on Facebook and YouTube – members will receive an invitation to join the Zoom call.
The themed section on ‘Mechanisms of National Solidarity’ explores key questions and challenges related to studying national solidarity as distinct from national identity. Focusing on the ‘how’ rather than the ‘what’, this section highlights the importance of examining and theorising the social mechanisms that shape different manifestations of national solidarity. These mechanisms include interpersonal interactions, social networks, communicative processes, socio-political institutions and iconic material objects. Additionally, the introduction briefly outlines the six contributions in this section, which examines specific solidarity mechanisms within particular national contexts. The contributions offer valuable insights into the study of nationhood and nationalism in both everyday life and public events, helping to unravel the under-explored relationship between collective identity formation and the creation of solidarity.
The articles are:
Introduction – Danny Kaplan
Clubs and events: Two models of performance in studies of sport and national solidarity – Danny Kaplan
Between deep comradeship and nationalism: The social dynamics of solidarity on the battlefield – Siniša Malešević
The victims’ shoes trope and emerging solidarity in political protest – Lea David
Orchestrating National Occasions: The formation of the Irish American athletic league in New York City (1904–1920) – Dan Lainer-Vos
Clapping the nation, or, from a global pandemic to national imaginaries via local solidarities – Jon Fox
Performing national practices of solidarity-through-sameness – Hizky Shoham

From Empire to Nation-State: Minority Rights in Estonia in the First Half of the 20th Century
2025-02-18 17:30 - 19:30 UTC | PAN 9.04, LSE
This year’s Anthony D. Smith Visiting Fellow, Timo Aava, speaks on his research on non-territorial autonomy. We’ll be live on Facebook and YouTube or you can join us in person in room PAN.9.04 at the LSE.
The talk will discuss new findings on the theoretical discussions and the implementation of non-territorial minority self-government in Estonia during the first half of the 20th century. Based on the principle of non-territorial autonomy, Estonia introduced legislation in 1925 allowing minorities to establish self-government bodies to administer their cultural and educational affairs. This legislation was widely regarded as the most minority-friendly in interwar Europe. The talk will argue that this legislation and the debates surrounding it were a continuation of earlier discussions on the organisation of empires and the rights of nationalities, with which theoreticians and politicians had intensively engaged in the Habsburg and Romanov empires. The talk will offer a fresh interpretation of the emergence and functioning of this minority protection system and show that the Estonian case was part of a transnational debate over the nature of modern statehood and the rights of nationalities.
Timo Aava is a historian of modern Europe focusing on the history of political thought and minority rights. He holds a doctoral degree in history from the University of Vienna. He has held research positions at the Jacob Robinson Institute for the History of Individual and Collective Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the University of Vienna, and the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies. In addition to the Anthony D. Smith Visiting Fellowship at LSE, in the 2024-2025 academic year, he will hold academic positions at Yale University and Harvard University.

Nationalism and cosmopolitanism in China
2025-03-12 16:00 - 17:30 UTC | Violet Laidlaw Room, 6th Floor, Chrystal MacMillan Building, 15a George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LD, United Kingdom
We join the University of Edinburgh School of Social and Political Science on March 12th from 1600UTC (check this time in your city) for a presentation by Dr Canglong Wang on nationalism and cosmopolitanism in China. We’ll be live on Facebook and YouTube, or you can join in person at the Chrystal Macmillan Building in Edinburgh or on Zoom (registration required for both).
About the talk
In this talk, I explore the intricate relationship between nationalism and cosmopolitanism and how they influence the discourse and practice of citizenship, especially within Confucian education. I investigate the theoretical underpinnings of Confucian classical education and share insights from the teaching practices at a specific Confucian school, showing how these elements come together to shape students into Confucian cosmopolitan citizens with a strong sense of Chinese national identity. Through this discussion, I offer an insider perspective on how civic identity is nurtured within the Confucian tradition, contributing to the broader shift toward post-orientalist understandings of citizenship. Ultimately, I argue that Confucian education has the potential to enrich global conversations on citizenship by providing nuanced perspectives on the relationship between national identity and global awareness, all within the unique context of China’s political and cultural environment.
About the speaker
Canglong Wang is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Brighton. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Edinburgh and has previously taught at the University of Hull and Birkbeck, University of London. His research extensively explores the cultural, social, and political implications of the revival of Confucian education in contemporary China. He has a persistent research interest in the topic of Confucianism and citizenship in China. His work has been featured in many leading journals and edited volumes. He is the author of “The Rise of Confucian Citizens in China: Theoretical Reflections and Empirical Explorations” (Routledge, 2023) and “Cultivating the Confucian Individual: The Confucian Education Revival in China” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). As a guest editor, Dr. Wang has successfully completed three Special Issues of journals, including “Reconsidering Chinese Citizenship” for Citizenship Studies (2023), “Beyond the State’s Reach? Education and Citizen Making in China” for Social Transformations in Chinese Societies (2023), and “Reinventing Confucian Education in Contemporary China” for China Perspectives (2022).

'Doing Nation' in a Digital Age: Banal Expressions of Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in Polymedia Environments
2025-04-07 17:30 - 19:00 (Europe/Paris) | Online
Sanja Vico discusses her new book, ‘Doing Nation’ in a Digital Age Banal Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in Polymedia Environments, with Mirca Madianou, Sandra Obradović, and Birgül Yılmaz. We’ll be live on Facebook, YouTube, and Zoom on 7th April from 1730 – registration is required to join us on Zoom.
This is a joint event with the Centre for European Studies at the University of Exeter.
About the book
This book introduces a new theory of national identity, arguing that the nation does not only represent an abstract “imagined community” but also represents embodied cultural and discursive practices.
Drawing upon a detailed case study of Serbian Londoners, this truly interdisciplinary study positions media as constitutive of national identities. The author contends that nations come into being and are sustained through everyday interpersonal communication practices that have increasingly become mediated, especially for migrants. She develops the concept of “doing nation” to argue that we should think of the nation as a dynamic process. Situated first within a particular migration context, the concept is then applied more broadly as everyday communication practices are becoming increasingly mediated worldwide.
Covering a breadth of key theories and concepts in this field, including diaspora, ethnicity, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, social media affordances and polymedia, this book will appeal to scholars and students researching digital media, migration, identities, nationalism and cosmopolitanism in the social science disciplines.
Sanja Vico
Sanja Vico is a Lecturer (E&R) in Communications and Digital Media at the University of Exeter, and a collaborator on the ERC-funded project Justice Interactions and Peacebuilding at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She received a PhD in Media and Communications from Goldsmiths, University of London, having previously graduated from the LSE and the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade. She has published on issues of digital media in contexts of migration, identity, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, post-conflict justice and reconciliation. Her monograph titled “‘Doing Nation’ in a Digital Age: Banal Expressions of Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in Polymedia Environments” was published with Routledge in December 2024. She was awarded for her article “‘Globalised Difference’: Identity Politics on Social Media” by ECREA in 2019.
Mirca Madianou
Mirca Madianou is Professor in the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her current research focuses on the social consequences of communication technologies, infrastructures and artificial intelligence (AI) in a global south context especially in relation to migration and humanitarian emergencies. She is currently Principal Investigator on a British Academy grant on digital identity programmes in refugee camps in Thailand. Her latest book, ‘Technocolonialism: when technology for good is harmful’ was published in November 2024. Earlier books include: Mediating the Nation: news, audiences and the politics of identity, and Migration and New Media: transnational families and polymedia. At Goldsmiths, Mirca is academic co-director of the newly established Migrant Futures Institute and co-convenor of the Digital Culture Unit.
Sandra Obradović
Sandra Obradović is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the Open University and a researcher at the Electoral Psychology Observatory (EPO, LSE). She completed her PhD in Social Psychology at the London School of Economics in the UK. She serves on the editorial board for the European Journal of Social Psychology. She specializes in researching how group identities and group boundaries are constructed, mobilised and resisted, and the consequences this has for political behaviour, including in contexts of post-conflict societies, populism, polarization and elections.
Birgül Yılmaz
Birgül Yılmaz is Senior Lecturer in Intercultural Communication at the University of Exeter, where she is one of the University Senators. She is a critical sociolinguist, applied linguist, and ethnographer conducting ethnographic and discourse analytic research projects that focus on language, forced migration, and everyday social inequalities in humanitarian settings. She has held research and teaching positions internationally, with roles in Greece, the UK, the USA, and Hong Kong. She was awarded a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, during which she conducted an 18-month ethnography with refugees living in two neighbourhoods in Athens.

ASEN Conference 2025: Nationalism and Borders
2025-04-23 - 2025-04-25 | Central European University, Nador utca 15, Budapest, 1051, Hungary
Full information is at asen.ac.uk/conference.

N&N Debate 2025: Aram Hur's Narratives of Civic Duty: How National Stories Shape Democracy in Asia
2025-06-04 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Paris) | Sumeet Valrani Theatre, London School of Economics, Centre Building, Houghton Street, London, London, WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom
Join the panel for a debate on Narratives of Civic Duty: How National Stories Shape Democracy in Asia (Cornell UP, 2022), by Aram Hur. The event takes place in the Sumeet Valrani Lecture Theatre at the LSE, or join us online on Facebook or YouTube, from 1800 on Wednesday 4th June 2025.
Our speakers, Atsuko Ichijo and Yookyeong Im join the author, Aram Hur, for a debate on her book which investigates the impulse behind a sense of civic duty in democracies. Why, she asks, do some citizens feel a responsibility to vote, pay taxes, or take up arms in defense of one’s country? Through comparing democratic societies in East Asia and elsewhere, Hur shows that the sense of obligation to be a good citizen—upon which the resilience of a democracy depends—emerges from a force long thought detrimental to democracy itself: national attachments.
Narratives of Civic Duty won the 2023 Robert A. Dahl Award from APSA, and was shortlisted for the 2023 Luebbert Award from APSA for best book in comparative politics.
About the speakers
Atsuko Ichijo is Associate Professor in Sociology in the Department of Criminology, Politics and Sociology, Kingston University, London. Her research interests are in the field of Nationalism Studies. Her recent publication includes:Nationalism and Subjectivity: East Asian Experiences (2025, forthcoming, Oxford University Press); ‘Defending the Scottishness of Scotch Whisky’ (2024), in Catherin Ng, Titilayo Adebola and Abbe Brown (eds) Place-Branding Experiences: Perspectives from Intellectual Property Owners, Users and Lawyers, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 57-74; ‘What does it mean to be a Christian nationalist in Meiji Japan?: Religion, nationalism and the state’, (2023),International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 309-327; ‘“Overcoming modernity”, overcoming what?: “Modernity” in wartime Japan and its implication’, (2022), International Journal of Social Imaginaries, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 107-128. She is a member of the editorial team of Nations and Nationalism.
Yookyeong Im is an anthropologist specializing in law, language, gender and sexuality, and social movements in the context of contemporary Korea. Her work examines the ways in which the law engages with social discrimination and political aspirations. Her research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies, among others. She is currently working on a book manuscript based on her doctoral thesis, which explores how legal advocacy has emerged as one of the most potent means in South Korean queer activism since the late 2000s. With ethnographic and historical approaches to the increasing judicialization of social movements, she revisits the question of law’s potential in emancipatory politics and reveals the dilemmatic function of law in shaping queer political imaginations. Before joining the University of Sheffield, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Korean studies, Indiana University Bloomington.
Aram Hur is the Kim Koo Chair in Korean Studies and Assistant Professor of Political Science at The Fletcher School, Tufts University. She is a scholar of nationalism and democracy in East Asia. Her first book, Narratives of Civic Duty: How National Stories Shape Democracy in Asia, is winner of the 2023 Robert A. Dahl Award for “scholarship of the highest quality on the subject of democracy” from the American Political Science Association. Her research appears in leading disciplinary journals including the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and Journal of East Asian Studies. I frequently serve as an expert panelist on Korea & democracy issues and contribute evidence-based commentary to current affairs, including in Foreign Policy and the Washington Post. She holds a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University, M.P.P. from the Harvard Kennedy School, and B.A. with honors from Stanford University.
Elliott Green is Professor in Development Studies in the Department of International Development at the LSE. Elliott has three main research areas: 1) ethnic politics and national identity in Africa, 2) patronage, clientelism and African development, and 3) the political demography of modern Africa. He has conducted fieldwork in Uganda, Tanzania and Botswana, and is currently working on a book manuscript on ethnic and national identity in modern Africa. His major publications include Industrialization and Assimilation: Explaining Ethnic Change in the Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2022) as well as articles in such academic journals as the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Ethnic and Racial Studies, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Modern African Studies, Studies in Comparative International Development and World Development, among others. He currently sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Development Studies, Nations and Nationalism and Regional and Federal Studies, and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Comparative Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. Outside academia he has briefed the British High Commissioner to Uganda twice (in 2008 and 2010) and regularly writes blog entries for a variety of websites. He holds degrees from the LSE (PhD, MSc) and Princeton University (AB).

Straight Nation
2025-06-05 17:00 - 19:00 (Europe/Paris) | KCL Bush House South East 1.05, Bush House, Aldwych, London
The next event in our book presentation series is Pavan Mano’s Straight Nation: Heteronormativity and other exigencies of postcolonial nationalism. Join us in person at King’s College, London, or online on Facebook or YouTube. Please note that a free ticket, available above, is required for this event.
About the book
Straight Nation dissects the intricacies of nationalism in postcolonial Singapore and its entanglements with the governance of sexuality. Rejecting the romanticization of the nation as a pure bastion of belonging, the book theorizes nationalism as a force obsessed with continually generating threats, and excavates the alliance it has struck up with heteronormativity to produce a series of minoritized figures that contemporary identity claims can neither handle nor dispel.
Through an elegant exploration of a vast array of texts and cultural artifacts, the book argues that the relationship between sexuality and nation is instrumental in producing multiple queered figures who are displaced from the national imaginary. Dwelling on what is often taken as conventional wisdom, Straight Nation demonstrates how queerness can be xenologized under the sign of the postcolonial nation and turned into a technology of “race”, gender and class in the right contexts.
The book delivers a sharp riposte to narrow identity politics and outlines in detail how the governance of sexual expression functions as a powerful mechanism to shape the lives of many – including, as unlikely as it may seem, heterosexual people. In the face of the far-reaching effects of heteronormativity coupled with nationalism, Straight Nation presents a compelling argument for an expansive, non-identarian political critique capable of dismantling the deeply entrenched force of heteronormativity in postcolonial Singapore, and the detritus of nationalism along with it.
Straight Nation is published by Manchester University Press
About Pavan
Pavan Mano is a Lecturer in Global Cultures in the Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities at King’s College London.

Radicalisation and Crisis Management: Shifts of Radical Right Discourse
2025-11-10 16:30 - 18:00 UTC
As part of ASEN’s book discussion series, we sit down with Vasiliki (Billy) Tsagkroni to discuss their new book, Radicalisation and Crisis Management: Shifts of Radical Right Discourse on 10th November from 1630UTC (check this time in your city). As ever, we’ll be live on Facebook and YouTube and members will be invited to join the Zoom call.
About the book
This book discusses theories of crisis management and the radical right, to shed light on how responses to crisis influence radical right parties in their presence, discourse, and evolution. The book offers a comparative perspective by examining case studies with various traditions of radical right actors, presenting data on how crisis exploitation can assist in exploring, reconsidering, bargaining, and learning about the prospects of change of political parties. It focuses on the debate on radicalization and crisis management. Similar to the already existing economic, political, post-Brexit, and migration crises in Europe, discourses of fear around the latest health crisis are paving the way for further radicalised discourse from the far right. The book looks into how radical right parties in Europe have responded to these crises. It monitors and explores how crisis exploitation impacts political strategies, opportunity-seeking behaviours, and the evolution of the discourse of radical right parties in the contemporary political landscape.
About the author
Vasiliki (Billy) Tsagkroni is Senior Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics at the Institute of Political Science. Their main research includes far-right parties, populism and radicalisation, political discourse, narratives in times of crisis, political marketing and branding and policy making. Their work has been published, among others, in the Journal of Common Market Studies, Party Politics and British Journal of Politics and International Relations and numerous edited books. They hold a PhD from Queen Mary University London (2015), a MA from Panteion University of Athens (2008) and a BA from the same institution (2005).

Book launch: Atsuko Ichiko (2025), Nationalism and subjectivity: East Asian experiences
2026-02-20 18:00 - 20:00 UTC | Birkbeck Central, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HY, United Kingdom
This event is free but registration is required.
The Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research (ICPR) and the Department of Politics of Birkbeck, University of London and the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) invite you to an event to introduce Dr Atsuko Ichijo’s latest monograph, Nationalism and Subjectivity which proposes a reconceptualisation of nationalism based on East Asian experiences.
Running order

Welcome by Dr David Cole (ASEN)
Introduction by Dr Mai Sato (ICPR)
On Nationalism Studies in Birkbeck by Dr Jason Edwards (Politics)
‘Nationalism and Subjectivity: East Asian Experiences’ by Dr Atsuko Ichijo (ICPR)
Reflection on the book by Dr John Hutchinson (London School of Economics and Political Science)
Q&A

The event is chaired by Dr David Cole (ASEN).
Dr John Hutchinson will comment on Dr Atsuko Ichijo’s presentation to initiate a discussion with the audience on the state of theories of nationalism and the field of Nationalism Studies. The in-person session will be followed by a drinks reception.
Dr Atsuko Ichijo is a Honorary Research Fellow at ICPR. Her research interest is in Nationalism Studies and Nationalism and Subjectivity is her sixth monograph on nationalism. She is a member of the editorial team of Nations and Nationalism and serves on the International Advisory Board of the Association of the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism.

Anthony D. Smith Lecture 2026 | Left, Right, & Centre: national political authority and its symbolisation | Jonathan Hearn
2026-04-21 18:00 UTC | Old Medical School, Teviot Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AG, United States
This lecture examines the ideas through which we both do and analyse national politics in the modern world, treating these as both concepts, and symbols. It looks at three pairs of concepts: Left and Right, Centre and Periphery, and Liberal and Authoritarian. Regarding Left/Right, I argue that this is a symbolic structure that is necessary for democratic politics, but not reflective of deep political principles. We may tend to overweight the analytic value of this distinction. Regarding Centre/Periphery, drawing on Edward Shils, I argue that this distinction is essential for the analysis of the distributions of material and ideological power in all states, across human history. Regarding Liberal/Authoritarian, I argue that this modern distinction hinges precisely on the ‘tightness’ or ‘looseness’ of the governing relationship between centre and periphery. Beneath this analysis of political ideas is a concern with how nations construct political authority, which for me is the core problem of nationalism. I invite the listener (and reader) to consider whether this concern comes within the remit of Anthony Smith’s ethnosymbolic approach.
