Date: 20 February 2025
Abstract:
This webinar will focus on the topics covered in the section, “Complications of Engaging Far-Right Participants and Formers,” in The Ethics of Researching the Far Right. In particular, in relating to current or past members of far right movements, what is the role of listening, understanding, or compassion? What tools of connection and analysis are needed to understand, but what emotional boundaries are also necessary? What skepticism should be brought to studying the personal narratives of current or past members of far right movements? What is the ethics of engaging past participants in far right movements (“formers”), especially in light of concerns about accountability, community safety, and how to engage targets and survivors of hate? Is there a problem with the treatment of formers as “experts” and leaders in work against “extremism”?
Chair: Joan Braune, Ph.D., Gonzaga University – one of the editors of The Ethics of Researching the Far Right and author of Understanding and Countering Fascist Movements: From Void to Hope
Video:
Speakers:
Joan Braune (she/her) is a Lecturer in Philosophy at Gonzaga University. She is one of the editors of The Ethics of Researching the Far Right, and is author of Understanding and Countering Fascist Movements: From Void to Hope (Routledge, 2024), Erich Fromm’s Revolutionary Hope: Prophetic Messianism as a Critical Theory of the Future (Sense Publishers, 2014) and co-editor with Kieran Durkin of Erich Fromm’s Critical Theory: Hope, Humanism and the Future(Bloomsbury, 2020). Her current research applies the Frankfurt School’s critique of fascism to contemporary resurgent far-right movements. She is active in the Gonzaga Center for the Study of Hate and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Hate Studies.
Carina Hoerst (she/her) has a PhD in social psychology from the University of Sussex. Under the supervision of Prof John Drury, she examined the connection between electoral events and subjective power in the enactment of a far-right identity. She focused on providing a social-psychological explanation for the sharp rise in racially and religiously aggravated hate crimes in 2016 in the UK and the US after Brexit and the US Presidential election, as well as the increase of US-based far-right street mobilisations in the same context. She has published findings from her own work and collaborations in multiple outlets including academic journals, blog posts, and podcasts. She has further contributed to an Independent SAGE report on racialised stigmata and inequalities during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as to a draft for the advisory report for the US House Committee investigating the Capitol insurrection.
Vanessa Tautter (they/them) is an oral historian and curator at the House of Austrian History, where they lead a research project on disability history. Tautter completed their PhD at the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories at the University of Brighton, with research stays at the International Research Centre for Cultural Studies in Vienna, Queen’s University Belfast, Utrecht University, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the University of Vienna and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Their research interests include oral history, cultural history, memory studies and research ethics relating to histories and politics of violence.
Katherine Williams (she/her) has a Ph.D. in Politics and International Relations from Cardiff University, UK. Her research investigates women’s engagement with the far right, with a specific focus on the role and motivations of women in Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Webinar series:
The Webinar series on Researching the Far Right: Methods and Ethics discusses the methodological, ethical, political, personal, practical and professional issues and challenges that arise when researching far-right politics. For this new edition, the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX – University of Oslo) has the great privilege of collaborating with the Reactionary Politics Research Network (RPRN – University of Bath) and the Centre for Alternatives to Social and Economic Inequalities (CASEI – Lancaster University) to discuss researching the far right from a more critical perspective. The topics addressed in the webinars will be based on the volume ‘The Ethics of Researching the Far Right: Critical Approaches and Reflections’ (Manchester University Press – Racism, Resistance and Social Change series), edited by Antonia Vaughan, Joan Braune, Meghan Tinsley, and Aurelien Mondon.