PhD Candidate presents research at the AIS Conference at Sapienza University

The Associazione Italiana di Sociologia (AIS) 2nd International Political Sociology Conference, Resentment, Fear and Identity in Contemporary Society, Emotions and Social Transformations in the Reconfiguration of Political Action, was held from September 17 to 19 at the Department of Political Sociology at Sapienza University, Rome, Italy.

This International Conference of Political Sociology aimed to provide a space for theoretical and empirical debate on ongoing transformations, with particular attention to the crisis of political representation, understood not only as an institutional mechanism but as a social relation and a process of democratic legitimation. This crisis increasingly takes the form of a crisis of recognition, opening up opportunities for emotionally polarising political languages and for neo-authoritarian tendencies.

Alongside the politics of fear, the conference also sought to explore the conditions of possibility for a politics of hope, capable of reactivating processes of recognition, solidarity, and emancipation. The analysis of political emotions thus becomes a central tool for understanding both dynamics of democratic regression and practices of resistance, grassroots mobilisations, and emerging forms of participation and collective action. The conference invited theoretical and empirical contributions that address these issues from a sociological perspective attentive to the interactions between economic, symbolic, and affective dimensions of contemporary political life.

Ms Rosemarie Calleja is a third-year part-time PhD student carrying out her research on her theoretical framework, "The Spiral of Partisan Disillusionment", on how strategic partisan news environments interact with voter identity to drive defensive political action rather than political withdrawal, within the Department of Policy, Politics and Governance at the Faculty of Economics, Management and Accountancy (FEMA). During the international conference, Ms Calleja presented her research in the Panel: Emotions, Voting and Electoral Participation.

Ms Calleja’s studies are supervised by Prof. Franco Curmi and Dr George Vital Zammit, both academics within FEMA and by advisor Prof. Karina Korostelina from George Mason University (USA).