Yisares 2024: Young international Scholars Autumn Research School 2024
Conservative governments and far-right movements across different country contexts share a set of strikingly similar strategies that can be summed up as ‘demographic imaginaries.’ They facilitate a backlash against progressive reproductive and women’s rights, same-sex marriage, and LGBT+ communities, the use of coercive policies and rhetoric against religious, ethnic, and other minorities, or anti-immigration policies. Demographic anxieties are nurtured by conspiracy myths such as the narrative of the “great replacement,” just as much as by other forms of majoritarian identity politics which imagine the majority (be it: white, Christian and heterosexual, Hindu National, Turkish Sunni Muslim, or European etc.) as threatened by political, ethnic, religious, sexual and other minorities and their struggles for equal rights.
These demographic imaginaries are at the core of soft authoritarian attempts to reconstitute the body politic, transforming the population along ethnic and social lines to uphold the electoral majority. A wide range of tactics from gerrymandering to neo-Malthusian development policies and population control, anti-abortion legislation, anti- and pro-natalist discourses and policies, are used to secure power. By the inherently contradictory concept of soft authoritarianism, we mean to emphasize the specific ways in which democracies are currently being undermined from within. It describes a specific form of government that deliberately blurs the lines between democratic and authoritarian rule.
This Summer School will address the central role of these demographic imaginaries in facilitating soft authoritarian politics in different parts of the world. It aims to approach this topic from an interdisciplinary and globally comparative perspective. Looking into the specific political, juridical, cultural, technological, and discursive practices in the different country contexts, will problematize how these narratives and policies remain entangled with longstanding nationalist, racist, and sexist notions and colonial fantasies. It will examine how they are reframed today and the technological infrastructures and data-political presumptions they involve. The Summer School therefore has the overall goal of grasping the extent of these politics, their contradictions and effects, and the dangers that they entail for democratic and peaceful living together.
The six-day Summer School offers participants an outstanding learning environment with an international faculty of renowned scholars in their respective fields. The intensive interdisciplinary program is composed of five thematic modules and a range of pedagogical formats including keynote lectures and panel discussions, interactive workshop sessions, and group sessions, in which participants can closely discuss their own research interests and projects with their peers and faculty members, as well as a Academia-meets-Activism event. The program aims to enhance the participants’ critical engagement with a variety of cutting-edge approaches and fostering lasting collaborative international exchange among students and scholars from the Global South and North.
Target Group
The course invites applications from MA students, PhD candidates, and Postdocs from Linguistics, Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, Geography, Law, and Philosophy, and related fields of study. Applications from advanced undergraduate students who have adequate prior study or engagement experience on the subject and make a compelling case in their application/statement of interest will also be considered. We offer the following SUN financial packages: Fee Paying, Tuition Waiver, Partial Scholarship, Full Scholarship
Language requirements
The language of instruction is English; thus all applicants have to demonstrate a strong command of spoken and written English to be able to participate actively in discussions at seminars and workshops. Some of the shortlisted applicants may be contacted for a telephone interview.
Mukulika Banerjee is Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science
Eva Fodor (CEU) is Professor of Gender Studies at the Central European University
Shalini Randeria is rector and president of the Central European University in Vienna and Professor of Social Anthropology and Sociology
Joachim Scharloth is Professor of German Sudies at Waseda University, Tokyo.
Zsolt Enyedi is Professor at the Democracy Institute at CEU, Budapest
Tyler Zoanni is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Bremen
Ulrike Flader is Senior Researcher in the RG Soft Authoritarianisms at the University of Bremen and Lecturer at the Department of Anthropology and Cultural Research
Lipin Ram is Postdoc Researcher in the RG Soft Authoritarianisms at the University of Bremen
Hagen Steinhauer is Doctoral Researcher at the RG Soft Authoritarianisms at the University of Bremen
Nurhak Polat is an Associated Fellow of the RG Soft Authoritarianisms and Senior Researcher at the University of Bremen
This Summer School is jointly organized by the Research Group “Soft Authoritarianisms“ and the Collaborative Research Platform “Worlds of Contradictions” of the University of Bremen, and Central European University’s Summer University (CEU SUN). It is funded by the Open Society University Network (OSUN), CEU SUN, and the University of Bremen.
Welcome & Orientation
Coffee Break
Module 1
Demographic Anxieties & Soft Authoritarianism (Part 1)
Lecture and Q&A : Shalini Randeria (CEU), Zsolt Enyedi (CEU)
Moderation: Ulrike Flader (Bremen)
Lunch & Leisure Time
Module 1
Demographic Anxieties & Soft Authoritarianism (Part II)
Workshop & Discussion: Shalini Randeria (CEU), Zsolt Enyedi (CEU)
Moderation: Ulrike Flader (Bremen)
Welcome Reception
Module 2
Discourses of De/Marginalization (Part 1)
Panel and Q&A: Joachim Scharloth (Tokyo)
Moderation: Hagen Steinhauer (Bremen)
Module 2
Discourses of De/Marginalization (Part 2)
Workshop Discussion: Joachim Scharloth (Tokyo)
Moderation: Hagen Steinhauer (Bremen)
Lunch & Leisure Time
Students Presentations
(2x parallel session)
Group A) Shalini Randeria, Eva Fodor & Ulrike Flader
Group B) Zsolt Enyedi, Mukulika Banerjee & Lipin Ram
Students Presentations
(2x parallel session):
Group C) Joachim Scharloth, Tyler Zoanni & Hagen Steinhauer
Group D) Nurhak Polat
Module 3
Gender Regimes & Anti-Liberal State
(Part 1)
Lecture and Q&A: Eva Fodor (CEU)
Coffee Break
Module 3
Gender Regimes & Anti-Liberal State
(Part 2)
Workshop Discussion:
Eva Fodor (CEU)
Lunch & Leisure Time
Students Presentations
(2x parallel session)
Group A) Zsolt Enyedi, Tylor Zoanni & Ulrike Flader
Group B) David Lyon, Shalini Randeria & Lipin Ram
Coffee Break
Students Presentations
(2x parallel session)
Group C) Joachim Scharloth & Hagen Steinhauer
Group D) Eva Fodor, Mukulika Banerjee & Nurhak Polat
Field visit to NGO’s/Activists in Budapest
Panel Discussion Event
“Academia meets Activism”
Module 4
Politics of Data and Infrastructures
(Part 1)
Lecture and Q&A: David Lyon (Queen’s University, Canada, tbc)
Moderation: Nurhak Polat (Bremen)
Coffee Break
Module 4
Politics of Data and Infrastructures
(Part 2)
Workshop & Discussion: David Lyon (Queen’s University, Canada, tbc)
Moderation: Nurhak Polat (Bremen)
Lunch & Leisure Time
Students Presentations
(2x parallel session)
Group A) Mukulika Banerjee & Ulrike Flader
Group B) Eva Fodor, Tylor Zoanni & Lipin Ram
Coffee Break
Students Presentations
(2x parallel session)
Group C) Joachim Scharloth, Shalini Randeria & Hagen Steinhauer
Group D) Zsolt Enyedi & Nurhak Polat
Module 5
Demographic imaginaries’ and imagining democracy
(Part 1)
Panel and Q&A: Mukulika Banerjee (LSE), Tyler Zoanni (Bremen)
Moderation: Lipin Ram (Bremen)
Coffee Break
Module 5
Demographic imaginaries’ and imagining democracy
(Part 2)
Workshop & Discussion: Mukulika Banerjee (LSE), Tyler Zoanni (Bremen)
Moderation: Lipin Ram (Bremen)
Lunch & Leisure Time
Round Table: Reflections of Students on Presentations and Summer School Content
Peer-to-Peer Session
Ulrike Flader, Hagen Steinhauer & Nurhak Polat
Coffee Break
Final Feedback & Farewell
Shalini Randeria & Lipin Ram
Closing Dinner