CARR’s Ideology Research Unit

CARR’s Ideology Research Unit (IRU)

About IRU

The CARR Ideology research unit (IRU) aims to address and explore the conceptual issues around the terminology and the relationship between the different strands of radical right ideology. How can we delineate between various strands of radical right, such as fascism, accelerationism, New Right, metapolitics, populism, but also the uneasy relationship with some of the more ‘established’ ideologies, such as that of liberalism, conservatism, or socialism and ecologism? The role of IRU is to look at how these mutually informing yet sometimes very distant notions overlap intellectually.

Members

IRU Head: Balsa Lubarda (Lubarda_Balsa@phd.ceu.edu)

Professor Ruth Wodak (r.wodak@lancaster.ac.uk)	Dr Valerio Alfonso Bruno (valbru85@gmail.com)	Sabine Volk (sabine.volk@uj.edu.pl)
Daniel Jones (Daniel.Jones@Northampton.ac.uk)	Dr Chamila Liyanage (chamila.s.liyanage@gmail.com)	Dr Vasiliki (Billy) Tsagkroni (v.tsagkroni@fsw.leidenuniv.nl)
Michael Cole (michael.cole@ut.ee)	Dr James F. Downes (jamesfdownes@cuhk.edu.hk)	Dr Maureen Eger (maureen.eger@umu.se)
Dr Bernhard Forchtner (bf79@le.ac.uk)	Monika Huebscher (mo.huebscher@pm.me)	Professor Aristotle Kallis (a.kallis@keele.ac.uk)
Maximilian Kreter (maximilian.kreter@mailbox.tu-dresden.de)	Catherine Tebaldi	Dr Haley McEwan (Haley.McEwen@wits.ac.za)
Bàrbara Molas (bmolas@yorku.ca)	Dr Andreas Önnerfors (andreas.onnerfors@uni-erfurt.de)	Alessio Scopelliti (as17191@bristol.ac.uk)

IRU News & Activities

The IRU was established in June 2020. It convenes monthly Ideology Research Group sessions, exploring the salient debates in the domain of radical right ideology. The first session was examining the meaning and approaches to ideology by looking at the work of Michael Freeden on the morphological approach to ideology studies. At the end of the year the IRU will release a Year-in-Review report, providing a review of recent works related to the ideological developments concerning the radical right.

In May 2021, IRU conducted a joint conference with the Populism Research Unit titled: Populism and Ideologies in Times of Crisis. We also held 5 working group sessions, where IRU members and invited speakers have the opportunity to present their research.  Additionally, after each working group session we conducted interviews with the presenters, thus helping to make CARR the ‘one-stop shop for knowledge and resources on right-wing extremism’. Michael Cole’s interview explored his work on far-right populism in Ukraine and Georgia and connections between the far right and football. Barbara Molas talked us through her work in far-right intellectual thought, Christian nationalism and transnational history, particularly the impact of Francoism in Canada. Brian Hughes explained the impact of communication technology on the ideology of violent lone actors and the political economy of early “Alt-Right” media. Lastly Sabine Volk’s interview explores her work of far-right populist politics of memory.