Doha: The third edition of Winter School, organised by the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS), kicked off yesterday under the title ‘Variations in Populism’.
This round of the Winter School programme will be held from January 4 to 13 and will follow a hybrid model with both remote and in-person attendance from participants, lecturers, and discussants.
This Winter School will address the theme of populism, approached from an interdisciplinary perspective, and raises key questions such as: To what extent are the current definitions adequate for analysing emerging cases of populism are the empirical tools developed to measure populist attitudes valid and comprehensive
The first day of the Winter School began with welcoming remarks from Executive Director of the Arab Centre Mohammad Almasri who discussed the Winter Schools contribution to critical and in-depth knowledge production in the social sciences and humanities.
He noted that the programme provides the opportunity for PhD students and early career researchers to network with regional scholars and gain substantive knowledge that might be unavailable in their home institutions.
Almasri referred to the success of the first round of the Winter School on the theme of ‘Communitarianism, Sectarianism and the State’ in 2020 and the second round on the theme of ‘The State in Flux’ in 2021, and the general role played by the Arab Centre in knowledge and academic production in the Arab region and worldwide.
Since its establishment in 2010, the Arab Centre has organised more than 180 academic conferences, published more than 500 books in addition to numerous peer-reviewed academic journals specialized in social sciences, political science and public policy, and other disciplines. Almasri highlighted the English language journal, AlMuntaqa, that aims to familiarise non-Arabic speaking researchers with Arabic language research through translation.
In his speech, Assistant professor at Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and member of the Winter School Organising Committee, Abdelkarim Amengay, explained that the reason ‘Variations in Populism’ was chosen to be this Winter School theme, was to reflect emerging research trends in a variety of social science disciplines.
After decades of research within South American and European contexts, the study of populism has gained more momentum during the last few years, particularly in the wake of the UK's vote to withdraw from the EU in 2016 (Brexit), the election of Donald Trump in 2016, and the rise of populist political figures in India, Brazil, and the Philippines.
Regarding the Arab region, Abdelkarim noted that aside from a few rare exceptions, populism has not been studied in this region or by regional scholars, and this round of the Winter School is an important step towards bridging this gap.
In the next ten days, eighteen researchers will present their research projects across varying specialisations that range from conceptualising to cross-regional comparisons of populism.
The programme will include lectures by both Arab Centre researchers and external specialists on the study of populism.
