Program | Symposium: Back with a Vengeance? Recent Advances in the Study of Nationalism

Symposium / Workshop: Back with a Vengeance? Recent Advances in the Study of Nationalism

Dates: March 18-20, 2026

Locations: Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI) and Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) in Barcelona, Spain

Organized by: ETHNICGOODS, a research project funded by an ERC Consolidator Grant (grant agreement No. 864333) and hosted by the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI), Barcelona, Spain

Motivation

In a world characterized by expanding transnational connections and an ever-increasing global flow of goods, people, and ideas, nationalism was pronounced dead. However, in recent years many commentators, regardless of their political orientation, have asserted its comeback—nationalism is back, often with a vengeance, leading to conflict and polarization. This event is organized to step back from the heated public debate. It brings together leading experts to take stock of what we know (and still do not know) about nationalism and its current manifestations. It also introduces and critically engages with a new research program on varieties of nation-building, their causes and consequences, and the global Nation-Building Policies (NBP) dataset that underpins this initiative. Our starting point is that all states grapple with constructing a sense of national belonging while managing ethnic and cultural differences within their borders. Moving beyond the debate about the death or resurrection of nationalism, there is a wide spectrum of strategies employed by states, ranging from coercive measures, such as ethnic cleansing and forced resettlement to integrative approaches such as promoting a shared language or recognizing group-specific identities through institutional frameworks. Similarly, states vary in the kind of founding narratives they advance, ranging from inclusionary to ethnic-exclusive, and the degree to which ordinary citizens embrace or resist these identity projects also demonstrates significant variation. The event provides a platform for dialogue among scholars leading major theoretical and/or data collection initiatives on distinct manifestations of nationalism, offering a unique opportunity to share insights and lessons learned.

Programme Overview

Event Locations

• Wednesday, March 18: Mercè Rodoreda Auditorium, IBEI (Carrer de Ramon Trias Fargas, 25, Sant Martí, 08005 Barcelona)

• Thursday, March 19: Room 23.103, IBEI (Carrer de Ramon Trias Fargas, 25, Sant Martí, 08005 Barcelona)

• Friday, March 20: Sala Mirador, Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) (Carrer de Montalegre, 5, Ciutat Vella, 08001 Barcelona)

Daily Schedule

Wednesday, March 18 (Mercè Rodoreda Auditorium)

• 17:30-18:00 Welcome: Sign attendance sheet

• 18:00-19:30 Symposium: “Varieties of Nation-Building: A New Research Agenda and the NBP Dataset” presented by Matthias vom Hau (IBEI, Barcelona). Discussants include Anna Grzymala-Busse (Stanford University), Maya Tudor (Oxford University), and Ruud Koopmans (WZB Berlin Social Science Center).

• 20:15-22:30 Official Dinner: Dinner for workshop participants

Thursday, March 19 (Room 23.103, IBEI)

• 9:15-9:30 Arrival: Sign attendance sheet

• 9:30-11:30 Panel 1: Matthias vom Hau (IBEI) presents “Global Varieties of Nation-Building: New Conceptual Perspectives and Data” (Discussant: Manuel Vogt). Manuel Vogt (University College London) presents “Elite networks and ethnic inclusion in divided societies” (Discussant: Juliette Crespin Boucaud). Marc Sanjaume-Calvet (Pompeu Fabra University) presents “Affirming the nation: the dynamics of subnational constitutionalism” (Discussant: Andrei Tarasov).

• 11:30-12:00: Coffee break

• 12:00-13:30 Panel 2: Daphne Halikiopoulou (University of York) presents “The power of belonging: Nationalist attitudes and far-right support in Europe and Latin America” (Discussant: Toni Rodon). Ruud Koopmans (WZB Berlin Social Science Center & Humboldt University Berlin) presents “Migration, state capacity and development: a cultural-evolutionary perspective” (Discussant: Daniel Cetrà).

• 13:30-14:30: Lunch

• 14:30-16:00 Panel 3: Emre Amasyali (IBEI) and Andrei Tarasov (IBEI/CIEE Amsterdam) present “Introducing the Cultural Elimination Dataset (CED): Measuring State-Led Identity Destruction, 1945-2020” (Discussant: Zeynep Bulutgil). Zeynep Bulutgil (University College London) presents “Linguistic nationalism in the Indian subcontinent” (Discussant: Emre Amasyali).

• 16:00-16:15: Coffee break

• 16:15-17:15 Panel 4: Matthias vom Hau (IBEI) and Jan Schlebusch (University College London) present “Ethnic Mobilization, State Capacity and ‘Multicultural’ Accommodation in Latin America” (Discussant: Daphne Halikiopoulou).

• 17:15-17:30: Group photo

Friday, March 20 (CCCB)

• 9:15-9:30 Arrival: Sign attendance sheet

• 9:30-11:30 Panel 5: Lars-Erik Cederman (ETH Zurich) presents “Beyond congruence: nationalism, state power, and the return of imperialism” (Discussant: Juan Díez Medrano). Emre Amasyali (IBEI) presents “Politics of Cultural Exclusion: Language Status Loss and the Persistence of Ethnic Conflict” (Discussant: Lars-Erik Cederman). Avi Astor (UAB) and Matthias vom Hau (IBEI) present “Exoteric Nationalism: Germany’s Stance on Gaza in Comparative Perspective” (Discussant: Martin Shaw).

• 11:30-12:00: Coffee break

• 12:00-13:30 Public Event (Expert Panel): “The Challenges of Diversity Management Today” featuring Viviane Ogou Corbi (Member of the Spanish Congress of Deputies, Head of the Anti-Racism Working Group), Daphne Halikiopoulou (Professor, University of York, Expert on the Far-Right), Kristian Herbolzheimer (Director, International Catalan Institute for Peace), and Martin Shaw (IBEI Research Professor). Moderated by Matthias vom Hau.

• 14:00-15:00: Lunch for workshop participants

Titles and Abstracts

Global Varieties of Nation-Building: New Conceptual Perspectives and Data

Authors: Matthias vom Hau (Corresponding Author) (IBEI), Emre Amasyali (IBEI), Juliette Crespin-Boucaud (University of Namur), Chun-Ying Wu (National Taiwan Normal University), Frank-Borge Wietzke (IBEI)

Most modern states claim to rule in the name of a national community of, at least formally, equal citizens, which inevitably confronts them with the challenge of nation-building-how to define national membership and govern ethnic differences. According to the existing scholarship, nation-building follows a specific temporal arc that starts sometime in the past and is eventually “completed”-with countries varying in the extent to which ethnic differences are eroded. But this perspective overlooks that states pursue a variety of distinct nation-building strategies, that these strategies may change over time, and/or that they vary by group. In response, this paper makes two contributions. First, we conceptualize nation-building as an ongoing process and further advance existing distinctions and develop a typology that distinguishes between four idealtypical nation-building approaches: assimilation, accommodation, segregation, and eradication. Second, we introduce new empirical evidence to explore the insights and limitations of this typology. Based on the novel Nation-Building Policies (NBP) Dataset, the first global dataset that identifies distinct state policies targeted at socially and politically relevant groups in all countries since 1945, we show that assimilation and accommodation have been the most employed nation-building strategies worldwide, with a clear historical trend toward increased reliance on accommodation, with important regional variation. Moreover, eradication and segregation are less frequently observed overall but appear more prominently in certain regions- particularly the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and East Asia.

Elite Networks and Ethnic Inclusion in Divided Societies

Author: Manuel Vogt (University College London)

How does ethnic power-sharing emerge in multiethnic states? While recent studies have emphasized the importance of ethnic inclusion for maintaining peace in multiethnic societies, we know much less about how such power-sharing materializes in the first place. I argue that pre-existing organizational network connections, forged in historic moments of political transformation, endow elite individuals with social capital, fostering cooperation. I leverage original individual-level data on the pre-independence elite of 21 African countries to evaluate the impact of these elites’ pre-independence network connections on post-independence power-sharing. Exploiting plausibly exogenous shocks to network distances resulting from natural deaths, I find that dyads of elite individuals whose network distance increased due to the deaths of other network members were less likely to jointly participate in post-independence cabinets, both within and across ethnic group boundaries. Analogously, at the ethnic group level, group leaders’ pre-independence network centrality increased their groups’ chances of post-independence government inclusion.

Affirming the Nation: The Dynamics of Subnational Constitutionalism

Author: Marc Sanjaume-Calvet (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

Internal self-determination (Seymour, 2011) is frequently framed as the preferred means of accommodating minority nations, with subnational constitutionalism (Marshfield, 2011; Ginsburg & Posner, 2009) serving as a key instrument for affirming national distinctiveness within federal systems (Requejo & Sanjaume-Calvet, 2023). Nevertheless, comparative experience reveals both the possibilities and the constraints of subnational constitutional arrangements in fulfilling self-determination claims. From a Kymlickean (1995) perspective, such frameworks can entrench external protections while enabling internal restrictions; yet the former often encounter resistance from federal authorities, and the latter generate contentious debates within the political community. Drawing on the case of Quebec (Taillon & Cauchon, 2023) and other relevant contexts, this article examines the potential and limitations of subnational constitutionalism and further develops its political functions within a context of competing national visions.

The Power of Belonging: Nationalist Attitudes and Far-Right Support in Europe and Latin America

Authors: Daphne Halikiopoulou (University of York), Carlos Meléndez (University of Lisbon), Jose Javier Olivas Osuna (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia UNED), Lisa Zanotti (Central European University)

This article examines whether and how nationalist attitudes drive far-right voting. Extending beyond narrow definitions of nationalism as a set of nativist positions on immigration we develop a theoretical framework which distinguishes between three types of nationalist attitudes, i.e. (1) attitudes relating to the preservation of the nation (continuity); (2) attitudes relating to the criteria of belonging to the nation (in-group); and (3) attitudes relating to the criteria for exclusion from the nation (out-group). We formulate a range of hypotheses about the ways in which these attitudes may be associated with far-right party support and test our theoretical expectations using original data from a survey designed specifically to capture these attitudes by employing a series of trade-off questions, fielded in six countries across Europe and Latin America including Spain, Italy, France, Poland, Brazil and Argentina. Our findings highlight the centrality of nationalism to far-right mobilization but also reveal the presence of a regionally asymmetric pattern, confirming that the predictive power of nationalist attitudes on voting behaviour depends on differences in historical legacies. Specifically, while the nationalist drivers of far-right support in Europe are multidimensional, Latin American far-right support tends to be articulated through civic rather than ethnic attitudes. Our study advances our understanding of why people vote for the far-right by (1) focusing on nationalist attitudes which tend to be under-theorized and under-examined; (2) systematising the operationalization and measurement of these attitudes; (3) proposing an integrated theoretical framework that extends beyond conceptualizations of nationalism as anti-immigrant exclusion; and (4) developing a generalizable framework that departs from narrowly focused European perspectives and, instead, links distinct types of nationalist attitudes to far-right party support across different regions of the globe.

Migration, State Capacity and Development: A Cultural-Evolutionary Perspective

Author: Ruud Koopmans (WZB Berlin Social Science Center & Humboldt University Berlin)

In this presentation I argue that when considering the relationship between diversity, state capacity and development, ethno-religious diversity deriving from immigration occupies – as compared to indigenous diversity – a special position. The reason is that migration tends to occur between polities that differ starkly precisely on state capacity and development. Migration is motivated by opportunity differentials and if there is no significant differential between polities, there is not much reason to move, and to the extent that there is, migration will tend to be balanced and reciprocal (e.g., between modern Germany and the Netherlands). Two main patterns of difference-based migration can be discerned. First, in settler-colonial migration, people moved from highly developed, high-capacity states to low-development and low-capacity areas of the globe. Roman imperial colonization of the Mediterranean Basin; European settlement and subjugation of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Oceania and Siberia; Arab colonization of North Africa and the Middle East; and Han-Chinese expansion exemplify this pattern. Second, from the dawn of history, people have moved away from areas characterized by low-capacity or failing polities with low levels of development to areas of high capacity and development. Since World War II, this has become the predominant pattern of migration, exemplified both by labor migration from low-wage to high-wage countries and from poor public service to rich welfare states, as well as by refugee migration from war-torn, poverty-ridden and politically instable countries to stable liberal democracies. The cultural-evolutionary perspective, now, assumes that such differences in development and capacity across different parts of the globe are to a considerable extent (but of course not exclusively) a result of cultural differences between world regions. Migration of the settler type is likely to raise capacity and development at destination because migrants bring along cultural norms and institutions that helped make their countries of origin prosperous and powerful. The price may be terrible though for indigenous cultures. For the currently predominant pattern of migration the opposite applies. Many studies have documented that interpersonal trust, particularly in strangers, is a powerful determinant of solidarity, social cohesion and public goods provision. Trust, in turn, is closely negatively associated with strong family- and clan-based networks characterized by a strong tendency to restrict marriages and other forms of exchange to close kin, and to distrust outsiders (see e.g., the work of Joseph Henrich). Likewise, cultural norms on the role of women differ starkly across societies, and female education and participation in the work force have been shown to be strong determinants of economic development. A third example are norms regarding the relationship between religion and the state. Societies where religion and state are strongly intertwined are prone to conflict and instability because they inevitably exclude groups that deviate from the state-sanctioned religious norm. Modern migration, now, tends to overwhelmingly occur away from low-trust societies with strong kinship norms and networks, patriarchical views on the role of women, and political instability related to ethno-religious conflict. For destination countries, such migration may pose serious challenges to maintaining the high levels of state capacity and development that made them attractive as migration destinations in the first place. Historically, this challenge has been managed by strong (and sometimes draconian) assimilation policies that sought to strip immigrants of their cultural difference. In recent decades assimilation has become much more difficult, both because of changed social and human rights norms protecting minority cultures, and because of the greater transnational stickiness of cultural differences because of the greater speed and lowered costs of transport to and communication with countries of origin.

Introducing the Cultural Elimination Dataset (CED): Measuring State-Led Identity Destruction, 1945-2020

Authors: Emre Amasyali (IBEI), Jan Schlebusch (University College London), Andrei Tarasov (IBEI/CIEE Amsterdam)

This study introduces the Cultural Elimination Dataset (CED), documenting state policies aimed at eradicating minority group identities through non-lethal means across 198 groups in 56 countries from 1945 to 2020. Existing research on eliminationist politics emphasizes mass killing and forced displacement, leaving cultural destruction underexplored despite its prevalence and profound, long-term consequences. We coded eight policy categories: destruction of cultural artifacts, destruction of cultural heritage sites, forced removal of children, forced change to a group’s way of life, suppression of language, suppression of religion, re-education camps, and restrictions on intangible cultural expression. Comparative analysis reveals three core findings. First, cultural elimination was three to ten times more prevalent than targeted killings throughout the observed period. Second, temporal trajectories diverge: while mass violence declined sharply post-Cold War, cultural elimination resurged from the mid-2000s, concentrated in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia. Third, Granger causality tests found no systematic temporal precedence between cultural and physical elimination in either direction, challenging prevailing assumptions that cultural destruction reliably precedes genocide. These findings demonstrate that cultural elimination operates as a distinct eliminationist logic, rather than merely a precursor to mass atrocity. By situating nonlethal identity erasure within comparative research on eliminationist politics, this study expands analytical scope beyond physical violence and provides empirical infrastructure for investigating how and why cultural suppression persists as an enduring instrument of modern statecraft.

Linguistic Nationalism in the Indian Subcontinent

Authors: H. Zeynep Bulutgil (University College London (UCL)), Neeraj Prasad (University of Amsterdam)

Among the many language communities that exist worldwide, only a small subset develops a territorially defined collective identity. An even smaller number pursue political self-determination, and fewer still successfully mobilize for autonomy or sovereignty. Yet the scholarly literature on nationalism focuses disproportionately on prominent successes and failures, largely overlooking the far more common outcome: linguistic communities that never embark on a nationalist trajectory at all. As a result, we know more about the conditions under which nationalist mobilization occurs than about why most potential national communities remain politically dormant. Our working paper plans to address this imbalance by treating every linguistic group as a potential source of national identity and systematically examining the conditions under which linguistic communities develop territorial consciousness and advance collective political claims. We focus on the Indian subcontinent under British rule, where an unusually dense and heterogeneous linguistic landscape intersected with far-reaching administrative reforms. This setting provides a natural laboratory for observing how language communities responded to institutional change. Our central claim is that linguistic nationalism emerges as the outcome of a multi-stage process shaped jointly by institutional opportunities and the internal (caste) divisions among linguistic elites. Empirically, we are in the course of assembling a dataset in which each linguistic group with more than 100,000 speakers in 1891 constitutes a potential national community. We will trace which groups developed territorial claims, mobilized for administrative recognition, and pursued provincial autonomy.

Ethnic Mobilization, State Capacity and “Multicultural” Accommodation in Latin America

Authors: Matthias vom Hau (IBEI), Jan Schlebusch (University College London)

This paper explains why Latin American states have varied so widely in adopting “multicultural” accommodation for indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples. We first situate the region’s multicultural turn within a broader nation-building framework that distinguishes four ideal-types-accommodation, assimilation, segregation, and eradication. We then operationalize these types for Latin America by constructing country-level indices from the Nation-Building Policies (NBP) dataset, a longitudinal source covering five policy domains-education, citizenship, public identity regulation, constitutional provisions, and state violence-for all politically relevant ethnic groups, 1945-2020. Descriptively, we find a regional shift toward greater accommodation and a modest decline in assimilation, while segregation and eradication remain episodic. Yet trajectories diverge, strong accommodation is concentrated in a few cases (e.g., Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile), assimilation endures elsewhere (e.g., Cuba, Uruguay, Brazil), and many countries display mixed profiles. To account for this unevenness, we derive hypotheses that blend region-specific insights with general nation-building theories. Panel regressions and event history analysis indicate that ethnic mobilization, in tandem with state capacity, are the central drivers: well-organized movements motivated states to enact accommodation and shaped its depth, while state capacity facilitated its adoption in response to mobilization. By contrast, democratization, norm diffusion, demographics, and socioeconomic factors played more limited roles. The study thus refines debates on multiculturalism by embedding it in comparative nation-building, providing new evidence, and clarifying to what extent, when and how accommodation has advanced in the region.

Beyond Congruence: Nationalism, State Power, and the Return of Imperialism

Authors: Lars-Erik Cederman (ETH Zurich), Andreas Juon (ETH Zurich)

Following Ernest Gellner, classic modernist theories define nationalism as the principle demanding congruence between state and nation. Yet both historical and contemporary cases suggest that nationalism often exceeds rather than achieves congruence. We reconceptualize nationalism as a political ideology that claims state power in the name of a nation. This perspective highlights dominant nationalism, in which one nation claims political authority within a state, and its expansionist variant, imperialist nationalism, where such claims extend beyond existing borders through territorial incorporation or hierarchical authority over other polities. Drawing on a global sample of states from 1816 to 2023, we show that states governed by dominant nationalists-and especially those pursuing imperialist nationalism-are more likely to conquer other states and to provoke destabilizing backlash, including civil war, irregular regime change, foreign occupation, and reactive nationalism abroad. As imperialist nationalist states accumulate power, they increasingly undermine their own stability.

Politics of Cultural Exclusion: Language Status Loss and the Persistence of Ethnic Conflict

Authors: Emre Amasyali (IBEI), Juliette Crespin Boucaud (University of Namur), Matthias vom Hau (IBEI)

Cultural status grievances-arising from the denial of recognition of groups’ cultural practices and identities-are a neglected driver of civil war. This study examines language-based grievances as a particularly salient form of cultural status grievance, focusing on state-imposed exclusion from public education. Drawing on the Nation Building Policies (NBP) dataset (1945-2020), we construct group-level indicators of language recognition and exclusion matched with group-level conflict indicators for 907 politically relevant ethnic groups across 162 countries. Progressive model specifications reveal that the naive association between language exclusion and conflict is almost entirely driven by between-country confounding. But this is not a null finding; rather it reframes the research question. A sharp onset-incidence asymmetry clarifies the operative mechanism: language downgrade carries no significant predictive power over conflict initiation but is robustly associated with conflict persistence, consistent with a dynamic in which symbolic grievances sustain rather than ignite armed mobilization. Granger-type tests further suggest a reciprocal cycle in which states respond to insurgency with linguistic repression, deepening the grievances that maintain it. Notably, groups whose languages were never taught during their time under observation display no increased likelihood of conflict-it is the reversal of previously recognized status, not the baseline absence of recognition, that carries mobilizing force. These findings shift the question from “does cultural exclusion cause conflict?” to “under what conditions does cultural status loss become a mobilizable grievance?”

Exoteric Nationalism: Germany’s Stance on Gaza in Comparative Perspective

Authors: Avi Astor (UAB), Matthias vom Hau (IBEI)

Following Hamas’ massacre on October 7th, 2023 and Israel’s harsh reprisals, Germany clamped down on anti-Israel protest, often equating it with antisemitism. Is Germany’s special relationship with Israel entirely unique, a product of the Holocaust’s singularity? We argue it is a case of a broader phenomenon we call “exoteric nationalism,” a form of nationalism premised on solidarity with, and loyalty to, a foreign national project. Drawing comparisons with other cases, including Christian Zionism in the US and support for Ukraine in the Baltics, we show how exoteric nationalism can unite but also divide when weaponized to exclude those deemed insufficiently loyal to the foreign nation. This perspective challenges classic ethnic or territorial conceptions of the nation. It shows how external national projects can serve as referents for demarcating, expressing, and contesting national identity at home, thus broadening our understanding of how constitutive Others inform national identifications and imaginations.

Participants’ Bios

Anna Grzymala-Busse

Anna Grzymala-Busse is the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University, where she also directs the Europe Center and is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute. Her research focuses on state formation, religion and politics, and post-communist politics. She is the author of four books, most recently Sacred Foundations: the Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State.

Andrei Tarasov

Andrei Tarasov is a Research Fellow on the ERC-funded ETHNICGOODS project at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). He holds a PhD in International Relations from the School of International Studies at the University of Trento (Italy). He previously obtained a BA (with honours) in International Relations from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and an MA in International Security from IBEI. His research focuses on nation-building policies toward national minorities, with particular emphasis on the Eurasian and post-communist regions. His broader research interests include separatism and nationalism in Europe, secessionist conflicts in Western Europe, and the analysis of media narratives and public discourse. His work has paid particular attention to cases such as Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Scotland, as well as to the links between domestic identity politics and foreign policy. In addition to his research role, Andrei is an academic lecturer at the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) in Amsterdam. He has published on nationalism, minority politics, foreign policy, and nation-building in peer-reviewed journals including Nations and Nationalism, Nationalities Papers, Italian Political Science, and Ethnopolitics. His current research examines comparative nation-building strategies in post-communist and Western European states.

Avi Astor

Avi Astor is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and is part of the Research Center for the Sociology of Religion (ISOR). He has written on a variety of topics related to religion, culture, and identity. He is the author of Rebuilding Islam in Contemporary Spain (Sussex, 2017). His work has appeared in several prominent journals, including Theory and Society, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Qualitative Sociology, the International Migration Review, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and the International Journal for Urban and Regional Research.

Chun-Ying Wu

Chun-Ying Wu is Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), Taipei, Taiwan. Before joining NTNU, he was a postdoctoral research fellow of the ETHNICGOODS project at Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI) from 2021 to 2024. His research focuses on ethnic politics and political behavior in Taiwan and Southeast Asia. He has published articles in journals such as International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China, Political Research Quarterly, and Democratization, as well as in edited volumes. He received his Ph.D. in Government from the University of Texas at Austin in 2021.

Daniel Cetrà

Daniel Cetrà is a Ramón y Cajal Fellow in Political Science at the University of Barcelona. His research focuses on nationalism, territorial politics, and the politics of language. He works comparatively on cases such as Catalonia, Scotland, and Flanders, with particular attention to party strategy, political discourse, and the dynamics of centre-periphery conflict. He has published in leading journals including European Journal of Political Research, West European Politics, Journal of Common Market Studies, and Nations and Nationalism. He currently leads projects examining rhetorical de-escalation and political responses to immigration in Europe.

Daphne Halikiopoulou

Daphne Halikiopoulou (PhD LSE) is Chair and Full Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of York. She is interested in nationalism, populism and far-right voting behaviour. Her research appears in the Journal of European Public Policy, Perspectives on Politics, European Journal of Political Research, West European Politics, and The British Journal of Political Science among others. She is a Steering Committee member of the ECPR Extremism & Democracy Standing Group, a member of the PopuList team, and joint Editor-in-Chief of the journals Nations and Nationalism and Political Studies.

Emre Amasyali

Emre Amasyalı is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI) in Barcelona. His research sits at the intersection of political sociology, comparative historical sociology, and history, with a focus on nationalism, ethnic conflict, and long-term nation-building processes. Methodologically, he combines computational text analysis, GIS, quantitative methods, and archival research to examine how state policies and educational institutions shape identities and patterns of inclusion and exclusion over time. His work has been published in Nations and Nationalism, Social Science History, and the International Journal of Comparative Sociology. At IBEI, he contributes to ETHNICGOODS, a five-year research project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant.

Frank-Borge Wietzke

Frank-Borge Wietzke is Associate Professor at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI), where he co-convenes the Master’s in International Development and leads the PhD support programme. He holds a PhD from the LSE and researches the politics of inequality, identity, and social development in Africa. He has held a Jean Monnet Fellowship at the European University Institute and published in journals including World Development, Socio-economic Review, Population and Development Review, Perspectives on Politics and Democratization.

H. Zeynep Bulutgil

H. Zeynep Bulutgil is a Professor of Political Science and International Relations in the Department of Political Science at University College London. Her general research interests focus on ethnic mobilization, nationalism, political violence, and the relationship between religious and political institutions. Her first monograph, The Roots of Ethnic Cleansing in Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2016; 2018), won the Best Book Award in the European Politics and Society Section of APSA. Her second monograph, The Origins of Secular Institutions: Ideas, Timing, and Organization (Oxford University Press, 2022), won the APSA Hubert Morken Best Book Award in Religion and Politics, Honorable Mention for the APSA David Greenstone Prize in Politics and History, as well as the Best Book Award in the Religion and International Relations Section at ISA. She has also published articles on ethnic cleansing, communal riots, political violence, social cleavages, and political mobilization in leading academic journals and edited volumes.

Jan Schlebusch

Jan Schlebusch is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science, University College London (UCL). He previously completed the Research Master’s in International Studies at IBEI, and joined ETHNICGOODS as a Research Assistant in March 2023. He is interested in nationalism, nation-building and ethnic conflict. His doctoral research explores states’ management of the visibility of identities in space, and how states claim territory through symbolic acts of (re-)naming, construction and destruction.

Juliette Crespin-Boucaud

Juliette Crespin-Boucaud is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research in the Economics of Development of the University of Namur. She holds a PhD in economics from the Paris School of Economics (2021). Her current research project focuses on the intergenerational transmission of ethnic and national identities in sub-Saharan Africa. Before joining the University of Namur, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the ETHNICGOODS project at IBEI (2021-2024) and at the London School of Economics (2020-2021).

Kristian Herbolzheimer

Kristian Herbolzheimer is the director of the International Catalan Institute for Peace, a public institute created by the Parliament of Catalonia with the mandate to promote a culture of peace in Catalan society as well as internationally. He has spent the past 25 years supporting peace initiatives, with a special focus on the role of civil society actors. He has worked intensively on the Philippines, the Basque Country and Colombia. An agricultural technical engineer from the University of Lleida (1994), Herbolzheimer has a diploma in Culture of Peace from the UAB’s School for a Culture of Peace (2001) and a Master in International Peacebuilding from the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies of the University of Notre Dame, in the United States (2009). Before joining ICIP, he directed the Transitions to Peace Program at Conciliation Resources (2009-2018), a London-based NGO, and was program director at the UAB School for a Culture of Peace (2000-2007).

Lars-Erik Cederman

Lars-Erik Cederman is professor of international conflict research at ETH Zürich. He is the author of Emergent Actors in World Politics: How States and Nations Develop and Dissolve (Princeton University Press, 1997), and co-author of Inequality, Grievances and Civil War (with Kristian Gleditsch and Halvard Buhaug; Cambridge University Press, 2013), Sharing Power, Securing Peace? Ethnic Inclusion and Civil War (with Simon Hug and Julian Wucherpfennig; Cambridge University Press 2022) and Nationalism and the Transformation of the State: Border Change and Political Violence in the Modern World (with Luc Girardin, Carl Müller-Crepon and Yannick Pengl; Cambridge University Press 2025). He has published many articles in scholarly journals, such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, International Organization, World Politics, American Journal of Sociology, and Science. His main research interests include geopolitics, nationalism, state formation and conflict processes.

Marc Sanjaume-Calvet

Marc Sanjaume-Calvet is Associate Professor of Political Science at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and a member of the Social and Political Theory Research Group. He has previously taught at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, served as an advisor at the Self-Government Studies Institute, and held research positions at University of Edinburgh, Université Laval, and Université du Québec à Montréal. His research focuses on federalism and self-determination, particularly secessionism, territorial conflicts, and governance in multilevel states.

Manuel Vogt

 

Manuel Vogt (PhD, ETH Zurich, 2014) is Professor of International Security in the Department of Political Science at University College London (UCL). His research interests revolve around elites, ideology, and contentious politics, with a particular focus on multiethnic societies. He is the author of Mobilization and Conflict in Multiethnic States (Oxford University Press, 2019) and of various peer-reviewed articles. He is also the co-head of the “Democracy and Peace” programme of UCL’s Policy Lab.

Matthias vom Hau

Prof. Matthias vom Hau is an associate professor at IBEI. He holds a PhD from Brown University and previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Manchester. He has been a visiting researcher at Princeton University and the Free University in Berlin. His research explores the intersections between identity politics, institutions, and development and has been published in leading journals such as Theory and Society, the American Journal of Sociology, Comparative Political Studies and Nations and Nationalism. In 2019, he received a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant and is the Principal Investigator of the ETHNICGOODS project which examines variations in nation-building from a global perspective, and their causes and consequences.

Maya Tudor

Maya Tudor is Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and Fellow at St. Hilda’s College at the University of Oxford. She researches the origins of effective and democratic states with a regional focus on South Asia. She is the author of two books, The Promise of Power: The Origins of Democracy in India and Autocracy in Pakistan (2013) and Varieties of Nationalism (with Harris Mylonas, 2023). She is the author of over twenty peer-reviewed articles in Comparative Politics, Party Politics, Perspectives on Politics, Annual Review of Political Science, and Indian Politics and Policy. Her writing has also appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Hindu, New Statesman, Washington Post, Indian Express and Journal of Democracy. She is a regular commentator on elections and the state of democracy in media outlets, including the BBC and The Guardian.

Martin Shaw

Martin Shaw is Research Professor at IBEI and Emeritus Professor of International Relations and Politics at the University of Sussex. A historical sociologist of war, genocide and global politics, his books include What is Genocide?, The New Western Way of War and Genocide and International Relations, and he has just published The New Age.

Ruud Koopmans

Professor Dr. Ruud Koopmans is the director of the research unit “Migration, Integration, Transnationalization” at the WZB (Berlin Social Science Center) since 2007. He holds a professorship of Sociology and Migration research at the Humboldt University of Berlin. From 2011 to 2016, he was head of the bridging project “The Political Sociology of Cosmopolitanism and Communitarianism” at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center (with Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Merkel and Prof. Dr. Michael Zürn). His mainly cross-national research focuses on the impact of immigration and diversity on nation states in relation to social cohesion, socio-cultural and socioeconomic integration, national identity and ethno-religious conflicts.

Toni Rodon

Toni Rodon is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, ICREA Acadèmia Fellow, and a Delegate for Knowledge Transfer in Social Sciences and Humanities at UPF. www.tonirodon.cat

Viviane Ogou Corbi

Viviane Ogou Corbi is a Member of the Spanish Congress of Deputies and an award-winning activist. She holds a degree in International Relations from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid and a Master’s in International Security from the Barcelona Institute of International Studies (IBEI). Previously a Global Talent Fellow at CIDOB specializing in the geopolitics of the Sahel, she is also the founder of the organization Puerta de África.

Funding and Organization

This workshop was organized by ETHNICGOODS, a research project hosted by the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). As part of the project, this workshop received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant Agreement number 864333).