Online workshop on Othering & Polarisation

Online workshop on Othering & Polarisation

This is the first of a planned series of events on this topic.

  • ‘Othering’ and polarisation have immediate and potentially severe consequences for politics across Europe – in terms of Populist denigration of sub-groups but also when politics is so divided that each side will not listen to the other (e.g. Brexit in the UK).
  • Unfortunately, relevant theory, knowledge and perspectives on these phenomena are splintered across many disciplines, ones that normally do not talk to each other.
  • These workshops will bring together researchers from many disciplines covering social, political, psychological, economic and cultural aspects.
  • They will also include researchers with interdisciplinary bridging skills, including participatory approaches, philosophy and social simulation. As well as plenaries and group discussions the workshop will utilise world café and fishbowl sessions to encourage connections.
  • They have the ultimate aim of building a more complete and nuanced understanding of the phenomena, but the workshops will only be starting points for this.
  • The workshops aim to result in (a) a ‘map’ of how the different contributions from these fields ‘fit’ together (or otherwise), (b) a list of identified research challenges (c) an agreed joint plan of work and (d) early prototypes of integrative agent-based social simulations to try to bring the aspects together within some dynamic frameworks.

To start the discussion (and because we are impatient) there will be a virtual workshop over 3 days: the 9-11 June 2020, 3pm-6pm CEST each day (including a break!).

Please register “here”:https://www.lorentzcenter.nl/othering-and-polarisation/registration-participants-workshop to be involved – there is no fee for this:


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.comses.net/events/582/