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My guests today are the political science power couple Maria Sobolewska and Rob Ford, who are both Professor of Political Science at the University of Manchester in the UK. Maria works on the political integration and representation of ethnic minorities in Britain and abroad as well as on public perceptions of ethnicity, immigrants, and integration. Rob works broadly in the areas of public opinion, electoral choice, and party politics. Together they published the book Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics with Cambridge University Press in 2020, which won the prestigious WJM Mackenzie Prize of the Political Studies Association. You can follow Maria Sobolewska on Twitter at @ProfSobolewska and Rob Ford at @robfordmancs. 

Ever since President Biden referred to “MAGA Republicans” as “semi-fascists”, the previously shunned F-word has become the omnipresent. At the same time, Christian nationalism has also become broadly used. Today, I will talk about fascism in general, and its relationship to Christianity in particular, which Richard Steigmann-Gall. Richard is an Associate Professor of History at Kent State University, former Director of the Jewish Studies Program, and a specialist of historical fascism, in particular its relationship to Christianity. In 2003, he published The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945 with Cambridge University Press. In the past years he has also explored fascism and religion in the contemporary period, including in the US. The perfect guest, therefore, to explore these current debates. You can follow Richard Steigmann-Gall on Twitter at @Notorious_RSG. 

My guest today, for this ninth episode in the Special Election Series, and the first covering a non-European election, is Malu Gatto. Malu is an Associate Professor of Latin American Politics at the Institute of the Americas at University College London. She is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Her work explores questions about political behavior, representation, policy-making, and gender and politics with a regional focus on Latin America, especially Brazil. Today, we will discuss the context, results, and consequences of the Brazilian presidential elections, which were held on October 2nd and 30th this year. You can follow her on Twitter at @MaluGatto.

My guest today is Kim Lane Scheppele. Kim is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University. Her work focuses on the intersection of constitutional and international law, particularly in constitutional systems under stress. After 1989, she studied the emergence of constitutional law in Hungary and Russia, living in both places for extended periods. Over the last decade, she has become one of the most prominent and insightful critics of Viktor Orbán’s rule in Hungary. Today, we will talk about democratic erosion, EU laxness, and the Frankenstate. You can follow Kim Lane Scheppele on Twitter at @KimLaneLaw.

My guest today is Tessel Middag. Tessel is a professional soccer player for Rangers FC in Glasgow, Scotland, as well as an international for the Dutch women national team. She studied history at the University of Amsterdam, where she also researched the history of women soccer in the Netherlands. In 2017 she was the first Dutch player to join the NGO Common Goal. Today we will talk about politics and women soccer. You can follow Tessel Middag on both Instagram and Twitter at @tesselmiddag.

My guest today, for this eight episode in the Special Election Series, is Giulia Sandri. Giulia is an Associate Professor of Political Science at ESPOL at the Catholic University of Lille in France. Her main research interests are digital politics, comparative politics, quality of democracy and political behavior. She has also written extensively on Italian electoral and party politics. Notably, she co-edited the special issue “Politics in Italy 2022: The Year of Mario Draghi” for the journal Contemporary Italian Politics. Today, we will discuss the context, results, and consequences of the Italian parliamentary elections that were held on September 25. You can follow Giulia Sandri on Twitter at @SandriGiulia.

My guest today is Elizaveta Gaufman. Lisa is Assistant Professor of Russian Discourse and Politics in the Department of European Languages and Politics of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the exploration of verbal and visual enemy images through big data analysis. Lisa has worked a lot on nationalism and security in the post-Soviet space, including in Russia and Ukraine, and is currently involved in collaborative research on music and politics in Russia, which will be the main topic of this conversation. You can follow Lisa Gaufman on Twitter at @Lisas_Research. 

My guest today, for this seventh episode in the Special Election Series, is Nicholas Aylott. Nick is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Södertörn University in Sweden. His main academic interests are in comparative European politics, in particular political parties. Today, we will discuss the context, results, and consequences of the Swedish parliamentary elections that were held on September 11. You can find more information about Nichols Aylott on, or perhaps better through, his rather minimalistic webpage at www.nicholasaylott.net and you can follow him on Twitter at @nicholasaylott.

My guest today is Luisa Turbino Torres. Luisa is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and the Center for Women, Gender & Sexuality at Florida Atlantic University. Earlier this year she defended her PhD thesis, entitled “The Politics of Being a Soccer Fan: An Ethnographic Perspective on Feminist Action Around Soccer in Brazil”, at the University of Delaware. Today, we will talk about gender and soccer fandom in Brazil. You can follow Luisa Turbino Torres on Twitter at @turbinotorres. 

My guest today is Christophe Jaffrelot, a CERI-CNRS Senior Research Fellow who teaches in three different schools at Sciences Po in Paris. He is a world-leading scholar of Indian politics, from its foreign policy to its political sociology. In 2020, he was elected president of the French Association of Political Science (AFSP), and last year, he published the incredibly detailed but still very readable book Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy with Princeton University Press. Today, we will speak about this terrifying study of contemporary India. You can follow Christophe Jaffrelot on Twitter at @jaffrelotc.

My guest today is Dana El Kurd, an Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of Richmond in Virginia, who works on authoritarian regimes in the Arab world, state-society relations in these countries, and the impact of international intervention. In 2020, she published the book Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine with Oxford University Press. Today, we will speak about authoritarianism in the Arab world as well as Palestinian opposition to both Israeli occupation and Palestinian authoritarianism. You can follow Dana El Kurd on Twitter at @DanaElKurd.

My guest today is Philip Gorski. Phil is a Professor of Sociology at Yale University, where he is currently also Chair of the Department of Sociology, and Co-Director of Yale’s Center for Comparative Research. He is a comparative-historical sociologist with strong interests in theory and methods and in modern and early modern Europe. Much of his work has been on the sociology of religion, including in the US, which includes his new book, co-authored with Samuel Perry of the University of Oklahoma, entitled The Flag and The Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy, published by Oxford University Press earlier this year. It is an excellent yet terrifying short read and will be the main topic of our conversation. You can follow Phil Gorski on Twitter at @GorskiPhilip. 

My guest today is Ellen van Damme. Ellen has a BA, MA, and PhD in Criminology from the KU Leuven in Belgium, as well as an MA in Conflict and Development from Ghent University in Belgium and has just finished a Fulbright Post-Doc at the Center for the Study of International Migration at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her PhD research concerned the role of women in and around gangs in Honduras, Central America, for which she did extensive field work between 2017 and 2020. Today we will talk about gangs in Central America, the role of gender, and the relationship to immigration. You can follow Ellen van Damme on Twitter at @EllenEvd.

My guest today is Aurelien Mondon, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics, Languages & International Studies at Bath University in the United Kingdom. He has been studying the far right in Europe and beyond for over a decade now, focusing in particular on its mainstreaming, and engaging critically with both the scholarship and its terminology, in particular the term populism. Aurelien is a frequent commentator on the far right in the media and blogs on the topic on Medium. His most recent book, published together with his longtime collaborator Aaron Winter, is called Reactionary Democracy: How Racism and the Populist Far Right Became Mainstream, which was published by Verso in 2020. You can follow Aurelien Mondon on Twitter at @aurelmondon. 

My guest today is Melanie Schiller, an Assistant Professor of Media Studies and Popular Music at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Her research combines critical theory, cultural studies, and media studies and focuses particularly on the relationship between popular music and nationalism and populism. In 2018 she published Soundtracking Germany: Popular Music and National Identity with Rowman & Littlefield. Currently, Melanie is part of a collaborative international research project on “Popular Music and the Rise of Populism in Europe, 2018-2022”. You can follow Melanie Schiller on Twitter at  @Mel_Schiller.

My guest today is Lenka Bustikova, currently an Associate Professor of Political Science at Arizona State University who will soon join St. Anthony’s College at the Oxford University, as Associate Professor in European Union and Comparative East European Politics. Her research focuses on party politics, democratic decay, ethnicity, and clientelism, with special reference to Eastern Europe. She is the author of the awards-winning book Extreme Reactions: Radical Right Mobilization in Eastern Europe, published by Cambridge University Press in 2019. Lenka is currently working on a new book project about the social origins of illiberalism, exploring the relationship between ‘uncivil society’ and political radicalization in Eastern Europe. You can follow Lenka Bustikova on Twitter at @LBustikova.

My guest today is Phillip Ayoub. Phillip is an Associate Professor in the Department of Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College in California. This Summer he will take up a Professorship in the Department of Political Science at University College London. His research bridges insights from international relations and comparative politics, engaging with literature on transnational politics, gender and politics, norm diffusion, and the study of social movements. He is the author of When States Come Out: Europe’s Sexual Minorities and the Politics of Visibility, published by Cambridge University Press in 2016, and co-editor, with David Paternotte, of LGBT Activism and the Making of Europe, published by Palgrave in 2014. You can follow Phillip Ayoub on Twitter at @phillip_ayoub.

My guest today, for this sixth episode in the Special Election Series, which will focus on the 2022 French presidential elections, is Rainbow Murray. Rainbow is a Professor of Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London in the UK. She is an expert on representation, political institutions, gender and diversity, with particular expertise in French and British politics. Rainbow is also the Faculty Lead for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Among her many publications are,Gendered Electoral Financing: Money, Power and Representation in Comparative Perspective, co-edited with Ragnhild Muriaas and Vibeke Wang, and published by Routledge in 2019, as well as Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France , published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2010. You can follow Rainbow Murray on Twitter at @rainbowmurray.

My guest today is Charlotte Lysa. Charlotte is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law and the University of Oslo in Norway. Her academic interests include politics and society in the Middle East and North Africa, and in the Arab Gulf monarchies in particular. She is currently working with the project REF-ARAB: Refugees and the Arab Middle East: Protection in States Not Party to the Refugee Convention, where she works on a sub-project on Saudi Arabia, but for her PhD-project she explored how women in Qatar and Saudi Arabia challenged patriarchal structures through playing football, and the social and political significance of the sport. Today, roughly half a year before the start of the 2022 World Cup, we talk about gender, politics, and soccer in Qatar. You can follow Charlotte Lysa on Twitter at @CharlotteLysa.

My guest today is Christopher Ogunmodede. Chris is a foreign policy advisor and associate editor of World Politics Review, who is based in Lagos, Nigeria. He specializes in diplomacy, development and international security, with a particular focus on West Africa and its history, political institutions and foreign relations. His areas of interest include governance, elections, military dictatorships, comparative authoritarianism, trade and regional integration, migration, diasporism and social movements. In addition to being an expert on international affairs and foreign policy, as well as a critical voice on African politics, as well as US and particularly European perception of and policies towards Africa on social and traditional media, Chris is a connoisseur of Afrobeat, which is today’s topic of conversation. If you want to keep up to date on Chris Ogunmodede, and his strong opinions on African politics and international soccer, follow him on Twitter at @Illustrious_Cee.