Dr Ulrike M Vieten, Assistant Professor, will deliver a presentation titled, “The Normalisation of the Global Far-Right: Does the ‘new’ normal of the Covid-19 pandemic situation make any difference?” 

This presentation is related to a book manuscript Ulrike is currently writing (co-authored with Prof Scott Poynting, Charles Stuart University, Australia) on the avoidable normalisation of the global far right.  Linked to their longstanding and international (International Sociological Association) work on racisms (e.g. Islamophobia, gendered culturalism), they concentrate on the processes of normalisation (‘making racism respectable’) in everyday life with respect to racist far-right thinking over the last 20 years.

They investigate how the boundary between extremist far-right and centre-right parties and societal orientations have been blurred, and in what ways hate speech and racisms neatly became mainstream. However, with the health pandemic of 2020 — and what might be called ‘a new normal’ — the question arises: how have these processes been interrupted? Or have they not? Are there indicators that the populist far right has been pushed back? The book will be published with EMERALD publishing, in 2021. 

Dr Ulrike M Vieten is a Lecturer in Sociology (SSESW) at QUB and Fellow of the Mitchell Institute. She is the Editor in Chief of the European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology (EJCPS).

Please register with mitchell.institute@qub.ac.uk by noon on 24 November to participate.  A meeting link will be sent to you before the event.  A meeting link will be sent to you before the event.