Agenda

30-31 May 2024
This international conference aims to generate comparative and contextualising perspectives on populist nationalism through examining it globally, with a timeframe spanning the ‘long’ twentieth century. The conference’s diverse set of experts will explore how the present relates to the past, considering the relationship between the broad experience of twentieth-century populist nationalism and the challenges and realities of populist nationalism today. The conference also enables a valuable and all-too-rare dialogue between historians and social scientists in examining it. 

Programme

30 May

9.15 Welcome and opening remarks: Robert Upton, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
9.30-10.45 Session 1
Thinking globally about populist nationalism in the 20th century

Eduardo Posada-Carbó, University of Oxford: Latin America and the Global Rise of Populist Nationalism
Miles Larmer, University of Florida: Of the People?: Populist and anti-populist tendencies in mid-Twentieth Century African Nationalism
Discussant: Bilge Yabanci, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

11.15-13.00 Session 2
The interwar world: populist challenges from left and right

Jeffrey L. Pasley, Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, Missouri: Taming Populism with History: Nationalist Myth and New Deal Culture
Giulia Albanese, University of Padua: Thinking Italian Fascism in the 1920s
Lawrence Goldman, University of Oxford: On the absence of Populism. Why was Britain neither fascist nor communist between the World Wars?
Discussant: Saipira Furstenberg, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

14.30-16.15 Session 3
Interwar populism: comparisons and contexts
Rosario Forlenza, LUISS Rome, and Bjørn Thomassen, Roskilde University: Mussolini as Trickster: Rethinking Political Leadership in Times of Crisis
Constantin Iordachi, Central European University: Fascism and Democratic Backslide in Central Europe: Interwar and Post-1989 Eras in Comparison
Robert Upton, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice: Hindu nationalism and the trajectories of anticolonial populism in India
Discussant: Martina Insero, University of Bologna

16.45-18.00 Session 4
Keynote Address: Erik Jones, European University Institute:
Economic Adjustment and Political Transformation in the “Long” Twentieth Century
Discussant: Robert Upton, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

31 May

9.15-11.15 Session 5
Part 1: Introductory plenary discussion of Day 1 proceedings
Part 2: Reckoning with parties and populism today
Tania Saeed, Lahore University of Management Sciences: Political Parties in Pakistan and their Transnational Networks: A Case of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf 
Emilia Zankina, Temple University, Rome: A qualitative shift or politics as usual? Theorizing the effect of new parties and populism on democracy
Discussant: Robert Fletcher, Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, Missouri

11.45-13.00 Session 6
Conflict, memory, and populism
Irene Martin, Autonomous University of Madrid: Ideology and citizens’ memories about the conflicts of the past
André Gerrits, Leiden University: Nationalism, populism and international order: Reflections on the war in Ukraine
Discussant: Martina Insero, University of Bologna

14.30-16.00 Session 7
Final plenary discussion, and future agenda setting