In January 2020, the Jean Monnet Project “Europe Dialogue on Democracy: Democratic deficit and the rise of populism in Europe” (CEDoD) - co-financed by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union and the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria - launched its essay contest “POPULISM: a corrective or a threat to democracy?”. As...

For the conference Constitutionalism in the Age of Populism , Professor Jeremy Webber from the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria has prepared a discussion paper for a pre-conference session. During the session with faculty members and graduate students from multiple disciplinary backgrounds, the essentially contested nature of populism...

The international conference will renew the debate over the relationship of constitutionalism to democracy, now in the light of populist politics. It will do so especially in relation to two countries at the heart of the debate (Hungary; Poland) but with comparisons to other contexts in which populism is gaining a foothold. The symposium will...

Populism is on the rise in the western democracies and it seems as if the topic of migration is used prominently by the right-wing populism for political mobilization. "Anti-immigrant sentiments are at the very core of this actor’s rallying cry and popular campaigns" writes the political scientist and historian Oliver Schmidtke in his latest blog...

Contesting the memory of the Holocaust: Loss of lived memory and the rise of the far-right populism The 75 th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz took place under ominous signs: There is a troubling rise in anti-Semitism and right-wing nationalists contest the memory of the Holocaust challenging its fundamental meaning for Europe’s...

By Oliver Schmidtke , Director at the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria Under normal circumstances regional elections in Italy remain widely unnoticed by international observers. Yet, these are not normal times in Italian politics. The country is currently governed by a fragile coalition between the centre left (Democratic...

Young Scholar Essay Contest: POPULISM: a corrective or a threat to democracy? Young scholars at Canadian universities are encouraged to participate in a discussion on democracy and populism T he rise of populism from the right and the left has fundamentally challenged traditional party politics in Europe and North America. Established centrist...

Canadian experts on memory and politics at the University of Victoria have launched a new Jean Monnet Network “European Memory Politics: Populism, Nationalism and the Challenges to a European Memory Culture (EuMePo)” jointly with scholars from Europe focusing on timely and urgent questions related to populism and the politics of memory in Europe....

Oliver Schmidtke, Director of centre for Global Studies, reflects on the top international stories of 2019 in an end-of-year special on CTV News. https://www.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=1863373