Five Researchers, Five Countries, One Focus: Populism & Conspiracy Theories.
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PACT ITALY | GIACOMO LOPERFIDO | FEB 1, 2024
Press Releases
Dr. Katerina Hatzikidi Receives Funding for 2-Year Project
„Anticommunism and Conspiracy Theories. A Study of their Historical Interconnections and (Anti)Democratic Impacts in Contemporary Brazil“
The social anthropologist and postdoctoral researcher at PACT receives funding from the University of Tübingen's Excellence Strategy in collaboration with the Baden-Württemberg Center for Brazil and Latin America and the Tübingen Research Takeoff (TRT) Program. The project funded is called "Anticommunism and Conspiracy Theories. A Study of their Historical Interconnections and (Anti)Democratic Impacts in Contemporary Brazil" and Hatzikidi will be the PI in collaboration with Prof. Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Brazil. Its duration will be of up to 2 years and it will involve a series of joint initiatives between the two universities.
CONVERSATION:
(with Constanze Jeitler)
Press Releases
Prof. Dr. Michael Butter receives Tübingen Prize for Science Communication
„Mutiges Eintreten gegen Verschwörungstheorien“
The American Studies Professor Michael Butter receives the newly created Tübingen Prize for Science Communication of 2021. The 43-year-old is being honored for the intensive communication of his research on conspiracy theories to the general public. Endowed with € 15,000, the award is part of the University of Tübingen's excellence strategy and is intended to promote exchange between science and society.
PACT: Populism and Conspiracy Theory
A Research Project Funded by the European Research Council
The last two decades have seen the rise of populist movements all over the world. Both in Europe and America, populism is no longer restricted to the margins of politics and society. Populists are governing in many countries – among others, in Hungary, Poland, Italy, Switzerland, Finland, and Norway, sometimes alone, sometimes as part of coalitions. Even where they are not (yet) officially in power, they have grown stronger and shape the political agenda, as the Brexit campaign or discussions about the refugee “crisis” in Germany and other countries show.
Conspiracy theories have also significantly gained in visibility and impact over the past twenty years, and they have been playing a major role in the debates about populism. The two phenomena are obviously connected. Populist leaders – from Trump to Maduro, and from Orban to Bolsonaro – regularly employ conspiracist rhetoric, and as number of studies have shown, the followers of populist parties and movements tend to believe more in conspiracy theories than others.
However, their exact connection remained unexplored for a rather long time. Funded by a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council, the PACT project, which ran from April 2020 to September 2025, aimed to fill this research gap. Through a variety of case studies and more general theoretical considerations, it has provided a robust account of the relationship between populism and conspiracy theory.
Please visit the project section for more information on the individual subprojects.
All project publications are available in open access and are available in the publications section.
An edited volume based on our first two conferences is out now. You can download the PDF here: routledge.com/Populism-and…. The print version will be out on July 4.
— PACT: Populism and Conspiracy Theory (@ercpact.bsky.social) Jun 20, 2024 at 14:06
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