Research news

What makes people translate their thoughts and feelings into action? With hate crimes against asylum seekers on the rise across Europe, this question has become increasingly relevant today. C-REX affiliate scholar Iris Segers argues that we need to look more closely at protesting communities, and engage with their stories, in order to understand what drives mobilization against asylum seekers across Western Europe.

John Erik Fossum gave a speech at the annual seminar of the European Parliament Former Members Association in the European Parliament in Brussels on 11 December 2019. 

The report «Mixing Logics: Multiagency Approaches for Countering Violent Extremism” is authored by Jennie Sivenbring and Robin Andersson Malmros of the Segerstedt Institute of Gothenburg University.

Through her position as Professor II at the Department of Social Anthropology, Penny Harvey has tried to put people intellectually in touch with each other.

As far right politics is becoming an ever bigger part of mainstream politics, opponents and scholars of the far right have to leave their 20^th century thinking behind and critically review their received wisdom. What might have been true in the 1990s, might no longer be true today. Taboos have been broken, preferences have shifted, and the broader political context has become much more accepting to far right politics and politicians.

After the euro crisis in 2009, the common currency was heavily criticised by many politicians. But how do European citizens perceive the euro? Joris Melman studies this question in his PhD project.

The ECPR Standing Group on Extremism & Democracy invites applications for the upcoming Summer School on ‘Concepts and Methods for Research on Far-Right Politics’, which will be held at the Centre for Research on Extremism (C-REX), University of Oslo, from Monday 29 June to Friday 3 July 2020.

- How can you build out an area in the immediate vicinity to an underground station so that people will actually want to be there? asks Thomas Hylland Eriksen. The employment market is opening up for applied anthropology.

How can analysis of ‘credibility contests’ help us understand where and when anti-minority activism is more likely to gain momentum? Joel Busher, Gareth Harris and Graham Macklin draw on their recent research to provide some pointers.

We are very glad to invite you to submit papers and full panels to the 2020 ECPR General conference in Innsbruck, Section Populism, Radicalism and Extremism: At the Margins and into the Mainstream.

The Section is endorsed by the Standing Group on Extremism and Democracy and will be chaired by Pietro Castelli Gattinara (C-REX, University of Oslo), Léonie de Jonge (University of Groningen), and Ofra Klein (European University Institute).

Ethnonationalism has been as common in Georgia as in other post-Soviet countries, but the far-right social movement has especially been gaining traction for the past five years, gradually becoming larger, more diverse, and more violent. The parliamentary elections approaching in 2020 create a window of opportunity for far-right actors to gain access to mainstream politics. ​

During the last few years, especially around the refugee crisis in 2015-16, vigilante groups popped up all over Europe and North America, patrolling the streets and national borders. They claimed to protect the local citizenry against crime and security threats constituted by illegal migrants and minority groups.

Little is known about how governments put together and put to use policy advisory commissions. In her dissertation, Stine Hesstvedt seeks to find out if and how politics play a role in the Norwegian policy advisory commission system.

Who is a dissident? When did the word enter international political vocabulary, and how did it come to mean human rights activists rather than religious heretics?

Liberal Roots of Far-Right Activism, by Lars Erik Berntzen, discusses the nature and implications of the anti-Islamic turn of the contemporary far right in Western Europe, North America and beyond.

This Working paper intends to give a thorough introduction of the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) and Generation Identity (GI) to inform future research, policy-making, and preventive work.

Decision-makers are often trusting of scientific and technical expertise. But could expertise replace democratic control?

Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are highly hereditary diseases. But is it possible to predict who will get them? That is one of the aims of Associate Professor Lars Tjelta Westlye, who is now to receive the Anders Jahre Prize for Young Scientists.

The United Kingdom will become the EU's first ex-member state. Can the relationship between the non-member Norway and the EU be used as a model for the UK after Brexit?

In the aftermath of the episodes of mass political violence that have occurred across Europe over the past decade, scholars and commentators are regularly confronted with the question of ‘how can we prevent this from happening again?’. Håvard Haugstvedt, PhD at the University of Stavanger and visiting researcher at C-REX, explains why answering is more complex than usually assumed.

ARENA celebrated its 25th anniversary with a half-day public conference at the House of Literature on 18 November 2019. 

Wednesday, October 9, 2019 – when the Jewish community all over the world was celebrating the holiest day in the year, Yom Kippur – 27-year-old German Stephan B. was mounting a helmet in a rented car and prepared for what he hoped would be a mass shooting attack against the nearby synagogue in Halle an der Saale.

In the wake of Sunday´s general election in Austria, the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) has faced a sharp decline in votes. FPÖ´s major loss is due to a recent corruption scandal, but it is also most likely caused by the declining salience of the immigration issue

Sir Ivan Rogers, former UK ambassador to the EU held the first EU3D Future of Europe Lecture at the University of Oslo on 18 September 2019. 

Petter Nesser's key note lecture on Society for Terrorism Research annual conference, Oslo, 21 June 2019