Julia Leser

unbedingt vorbeikommen! 👇👇👇

📚 Buchpräsentation & Diskussion:
„Brauner Osten – Weiße Westen. Zur Gleichzeitigkeit von Ossifizierung und rechter Gewalt“

🗓 Montag, 26.01.2026, 18 Uhr
📍 HU Berlin und online

Mit Christin Jänicke, Kathleen Heft, Julia Leser, Ilanga Mwaungulu, Anne-Kathrin Will, Heike Radvan, Nick Wetschel u. a.

BROKEN RECORD brings together nearly fifty academics from across disciplines, career stages, and global contexts to expose the pervasive realities of bullying, harassment, mobbing, and assault in academic life—and the profound limits of institutional redress.

#MLA2026 #ReadUP tinyurl.com/znejxkdk

Extremism in Extreme Times: Moving Beyond the Mainstream European Consortium for Political Research

📣Call for panels & papers for the 2026 ECPR GC! Join the E&D‑endorsed section “Extremism in Extreme Times: Moving Beyond the Mainstream,” co‑chaired by C-REX scholar @drkondor.bsky.social and former C-REX guest researchers @gretajasser.bsky.social & Ryan Switzer. Submit now! ecpr.eu/Events/Event...

New publication! Our conversation on emergent and everyday ecofascism – featuring perspectives from Germany, Zimbabwe, Romania, Turkey, the Philippines, the US, India, and the UAE – is now out in @amanthro.bsky.social #openaccess

anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Don't miss today's webinar on researcher safety and vicarious trauma!

New article by former C-REX postdoc @acmack.bsky.social and colleagues: what can universities do to better support those who study the far right. Check it out!

America’s Tech Right Is Obsessed With Building Giant Statues With proposals for a 450-foot statue of Prometheus on Alcatraz and a 650-foot George Washington, MAGA adherents are racing to build America’s largest statue.

You know who else was super-interested in giant monuments that linked elites/nations to mythic greatness? Oh right. Fascists.

Join us today at 5 PM (CET) (8:00 AM PDT and 11:00 AM EDT) for a webinar on the ethical aspects of ethnographic fieldwork among the far right!

Wir müssen Universitätsleitungen und -administrationen an ihre Schutzaufgaben erinnern. Die Universität Halle hat hier dringend Nachholbedarf.

The Anatomy of Right-Wing Populism Over the past two decades, populist politicians and parties have enjoyed remarkable success across the globe. The rise of right-wing populism is perhaps most noticeable in post-communist Europe, espec...

New #openaccess book by Jan Kubik & Richard Mole:
"The Anatomy of Right-Wing Populism:
Dealing with transformational fatigue in Central and Eastern Europe"

The chapter lineup looks fascinating – can’t wait to explore this.

uclpress.co.uk/book/the-ana...

Anna Aslanyan | The Censor’s Scissors John Heartfield was forced to leave Germany in 1933. Even before the Nazis put him on their hit list, his art had caused...

‘Some librarians were fired; some received death threats. At one point in the film, a grandfather turns up at a school meeting with a gun to tell the library supporters: “We know what you do. We know where you live.”’

Anna Aslanyan on book bans and censorship: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/oc...

Ernüchternd: «Der Blick auf die Geschichte der deutschen Universitäten im 20. Jahrhundert zeigt, dass sie als Institutionen äußerst anpassungsfähig an die politischen Gegebenheiten waren. Gleichzeitig traten sie … nach 1918, 1945 und vor 1989 nicht als Treiber demokratischer Entwicklungen auf.»

Claire Wilmot | Fascistic Dream Machines Part of the misunderstanding of the deepfake threat stems from the idea that it is a problem of bad information, rather...

«Part of the misunderstanding of the deepfake threat stems from the idea that it is a problem of bad information, rather than a problem of desire (or the material conditions that shape desire). The deepfakes proliferating across far-right social media … are fascistic dream machines.» #MemeFascism

Wenn die Brandmauer fällt In vielen sächsischen Kommunen entscheidet die AfD längst mit – auch über die Verteilung von Fördermitteln. Besonders im Visier sind soziokulturelle Zentren, die sich für Demokratie, Vielfalt und Teil...

In vielen sächsischen Kommunen entscheidet die AfD längst mit – auch über die Verteilung von Fördermitteln. Besonders im Visier sind soziokulturelle Zentren katapult-sachsen.de/artikel/wenn... via @katapultmagazin.bsky.social

Roter Hintergrund. Eine Schule in schwarz weiß. Davor zwei Jungs, die von hinten zu sehen sind und auf die Schule zugehen.

In ganz Deutschland kann man den Rechtsruck in Schulen erkennen. Aber es gibt Orte, an denen die Stimmung bereits gekippt ist.

Wir haben für unsere Recherche mit dem @zdfmagaz.in von @janboehm.bsky.social mit drei Schülern gesprochen, die sich wehren. Ihr solltet ihnen zuhören. THREAD 🧵

These findings underscore the complex power dynamics museums navigate in a political climate marked by the resurgence of right-wing populism and attempts to instrumentalize cultural heritage and institutional life for political purposes.

In anticipation of negative consequences, museum staff may avoid issues that they anticipate will lead to public hostility or political interference, modifying curatorial practice and effectively self-censoring.

Our comparative analysis highlights the multifarious ways populist politics affect museum work, including potentially violent interventions that target museum staff and more diffuse forms of influence on museums that are not under direct political pressure.

This paper contributes to the growing research on right-wing populism’s increasing impact on cultural and heritage institutions, presenting findings from an interview study with museum professionals in Poland, Germany, and the UK.

Our paper "Right-Wing Populism and Museums" is out! It shows how European museums are navigating rising pressures from the far right, from direct interventions to subtle forms of influence, and how this leads to self-censorship, reshaping curatorial practices & the role of cultural institutions.

Bedrohung von innen Wie groß ist die Gefahr durch Polizist:innen und Soldat:innen, die sich nicht mehr dem Grundgesetz verpflichtet fühlen?

Wie groß ist die Bedrohung für den Rechtsstaat aus dem Inneren seiner Institutionen – wenn sich also Richter:innen, Polizist:innen oder Soldat:innen nicht mehr dem Grundgesetz verpflichtet fühlen? Auf viele Weckrufe sind bislang wenig echte Konsequenzen gefolgt: www.blaetter.de/ausgabe/2024...

ChatGPT’s interpretation of contested memoryscapes favours the voice of current governments, capitalism and the far-right This study examines political biases in ChatGPT-4o’s interpretations of memoryscapes linked to dictatorial regimes in Spanish-speaking countries. Using a least-to-most prompting model and a Discour...

'ChatGPT’s interpretation of contested memoryscapes favours the voice of current governments, capitalism and the far-right'. Our new article, led by Tania Gonzáles Cantera, is out. It is an outcome of Tania's visit to the #HeritageMindsLab @hcaatedinburgh.bsky.social last yr doi.org/10.1080/1352...

In Trump’s Ideal Picture of America, Diversity Is Taboo

Is “diversity taboo” or is this a segregationist regime that hopes to reinstate open white supremacy.

It is absolutely wild (and fundamentally dishonest) that media is still reaching for euphemism instead of simply calling this racism.

one of the most infuriating parts of the Epstein story is over the same years that young women went to police and reported assault, and were ignored, law enforcement is pushing this idea that they need massive grants and manpower to rescue thousands of girls they say don’t even know they’re victims

Gaza and the End of History - Boston Review The apocalyptic scale of death and destruction lays bare the contradictions at the heart of the liberal international order.

"[Gaza] exposes what is fundamentally wrong today: a persistent inability to recognize every human being as equal and deserving of dignity and life, whatever their beliefs, skin color, or religious affiliation."

thank you @joelleabirached.bsky.social for this painful but essential piece

We live in an era of democratic backsliding. But the terminology of "backsliding" isn't up to the task of making sense of the deep crisis of liberal democracy around the world. I've just finished a working paper that lays out what I think is going on.

tl;dr it's about the state and society

🧵

Japan’s Long-Dominant Party Suffers Election Defeat as Voters Swing Right

Japan’s Long-Dominant Party Suffers Election Defeat as Voters Swing Right

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/20/w...

Picture of the current Fellow cohort with deadlines for the Fellowships.

🔔 Reminder: Interested in developing your research project at our Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities? The KWI International & Thyssen@KWI Fellowships for April-September 2026 are open for applications! Make sure to submit by 29 Aug 2025. 🔗 www.kulturwissenschaften.de/cfa-kwi-fell...