Upcoming Event: PoSoCoMeS Book Seminar

The Anatomy of Right-Wing Populism: Dealing with transformational fatigue in Central and Eastern Europe (UCL Press) edited by Jan Kubik and Richard C. M. Mole.

Over the past two decades, populist politicians and parties have enjoyed remarkable success across the globe. The rise of right-wing populism is perhaps most noticeable in post-communist Europe, especially in Hungary and Poland, where politicians subscribing to this ideology have come to power and weakened media pluralism, the protection of minorities, the sovereignty of civil society and the independence of the judiciary.

To develop a multidisciplinary understanding of the rise and functioning of right-wing populism in Central and Eastern Europe, The Anatomy of Right-wing Populism examines the two original concepts of neo-traditionalism (to capture the construction of the pure people in opposition to the corrupt elites and the threatening others) and neo-feudalism (to capture an economic strategy whereby a relatively small elite controls the apex of political power and a sizable portion of the country’s economy). This book argues that the causes and consequences of populism cannot be fully understood without a multidisciplinary analysis, drawing on the theories and approaches of politics, history, economics, sociology and anthropology. Grounded in empirical research, this volume provides theoretical insights into how populism became such a powerful political force and formulates policy recommendations on how to resist illiberalism, thereby appealing not only to academics but also to activists and policy makers.

Editors:

Jan Kubik is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Political Science at Rutgers University and Professor Emeritus at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London (UCL), which he directed in 2015-17. The 2020 President of Association for East European and Eurasian Studies and the recipient of the 2018 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America (PIASA). His work deals with the rise of right-wing populism; culture and politics; memory politics; civil society, protest politics, and social movements;

democratization/de-democratization; and interpretive/ethnographic methods in political science. Among his publications are: The Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power; Twenty Years After Communism: The Politics of Memory and Commemoration (with Michael Bernhard); and just published The Anatomy of Right-wing Populism. Dealing with transformational fatigue in Central and Eastern Europe (edited with Richard C. Mole). He received an M.A. (sociology and philosophy) from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, and Ph.D. (anthropology, with distinction) from Columbia University in NYC.

Richard Mole is Professor of Political Sociology at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. His research focuses the relationship between identity and power, with particular reference to nationalism, populism, sexualities and migration. His research is explicitly interdisciplinary, crossing the boundaries of Sociology, International Relations, Social Psychology and Socio-Linguistics. He has a theoretical interest in discourse – particularly, the Post-Structuralist Discourse Theory of Laclau and Mouffe – and a regional interest in Russia, Poland and Germany and increasingly on Brazil and other Latin American societies. From 2018-22 he was Principal Investigator of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network ‘Delayed Transformational Fatigue in Central and Eastern Europe: Responding to the Rise of Populism’ and from 2019-2023 he was Director of Research of the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme ‘Populist rebellion against modernity in 21st-century Eastern Europe: neo-traditionalism and neo-feudalism’. More information about his research and publications can be found on his website: www.richard-mole.com.

Discussants:
Dovilė Budrytė. Born and raised in Vilnius, I currently live in Atlanta. I am Professor of Political Science at Georgia Gwinnett College. I also serve as Invited Researcher at Vytautas Kavolis Transdisciplinary Research Institute at Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania). My research interests include memory politics, trauma, Holocaust justice and gender studies. My publications include articles on various topics related to minority rights and memory politics, one single authored and five co-edited books, including Memory and Trauma in International Relations: Theories, Cases and Debates (co-editor with Erica Resende), and Defending Memory in Global Politics: Mnemonical In/Security and Crisis (co-editor with Erica Resende and Doug Becker). In 2014, I was the recipient of the University System of Georgia Excellence in Teaching Award. In 2022-24, I served as the President of AABS (Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies). I currently serve as Editor-in-Chief of Lituanus, a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal.

Barbara Törnquist-Plewa is Professor of East and Central European Studies at Lund University. Her main research interests include memory, identity, and nationalism, and she has published extensively on these topics. From 2012 to 2016, she led the EU COST Action In Search of Transcultural Memory in Europe. From 2017 to 2020, she co-led the Nordic Research Network on Historical Traumas, and from 2023 to 2025 she served as one of the work package leaders in the Horizon Europe WIDERA project EUROPAST. She is co-editor of the book series Memory, Heritage and Public History in Central and Eastern Europe (CEU Press) and serves on the editorial boards of several academic journals in her field. She is the author or editor of numerous publications, including Whose Memory? Which Future? Remembering Ethnic Cleansing and Lost Cultural Diversity in Eastern, Central and Southeastern Europe (2016); Disputed Memory: Emotions and Memory in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (2016); Europeanization of Heritage and Memories in Poland and Sweden (2017); The Twentieth Century in European Memory (2017); and Cultural and Political Imaginaries in Putin’s Russia (2018).

Seminar link: https://zoom.us/j/95717210947