The Future of Democracy: Cultural Analyses of Illiberal Populism in Times of Crises

The focus of FUDEM is cultural analyses of illiberal populism as a set of antagonistic and contradictory discourses, which claim to challenge elitism of the political establishment in the name of “common people” and democracy.

The Graduate School builds on already established and partially institutionalized cooperation between institutions with interdisciplinary expertise in humanities affiliated with 6 Swedish HEIs.

FUDEM will unite already collaborating scholars with 10 PhD students who will be employed in such disciplines as cultural studies, ethnology, gender studies, and musicology.

Through offering joint courses,collaborative workshops, seminar series and other academic activities, FUDEM will raise a new generation of knowledgeable critical scholars who can explore crises, threats against democracy, and illiberal populist movements from the perspective of humanities. Illiberal populism has been on the rise globally for more than a decade.

It reveals itself in disparate, yet, related transnational discourses and movements from anti-gender and anti-migration to climate change denial and anti-vaccination.

While this ideology overemphasizes culture over politics, the research on illiberal populism remains the domain of political sciences and sociology.

In contrast, the researchers in FUDEM suggest that analyses of culture and aesthetics using interdisciplinary hermeneutic theories and methods within the field of humanities will provide new insights about illiberal populism.