The aim of this event is to share doctoral research with staff and other Department of Politics, Languages & International Studies (PoLIS) students, opening up discussions around their work.

Each presenter will have 15 minutes to present their work. This will be followed by a Q&A and discussion.

Panel 1: Theory and Technologies

Date: Wednesday 17 April 2024

Time: 2:15pm – 16:05

Location: CB 5.6

Examining how, when, and why classification systems develop using a multidisciplinary approach

Presenter: Alice Parfett

This project investigates how, when, and why classification systems that categorise people according to race and/or ethnicity emerge, evolve, are used, and have certain outcomes. Existing literature on classification systems tends to focus on theories of knowledge, power, and key operational features of systems, or wider historical events in which classification systems are used. This talk focuses on one historical case: Apartheid in South Africa, to see how actors’ sentiments and discourses vary through classification system emergence and evolution. To do this, sentiment analysis will be applied to primary textual data from the Apartheid period. It is hypothesised that groups in support will have distinctly different sentiments and language themes to those opposed, despite the continued use of the classification system and its terms, especially if the form of text differs e.g. newspaper article versus party paper. Thus, this work will contribute to understanding the classification system used during Apartheid, also the lifecycle of other classification systems. The use of sentiment analysis on historical texts also provides important contributions for Digital Humanities and NLP.

Meme-in Waves: Unpacking Political Narratives in the Romanian context

Presenter: Mimi Mihailescu

In the ever-evolving landscape of online communication, memes have emerged as influential tools for shaping public opinion. This qualitative study explores the motivations, intentions, and strategies of six meme creators, revealing how these creators challenge mainstream narratives and influence political behaviour. Through in-depth interviews and a comprehensive thematic analysis, this research positions meme creators as emerging political actors, exploring their perspectives on contribution, responsibility and ethical considerations in their evolving role in shaping public discourse. Going beyond humour, meme creators actively redefine participation by creating and maintaining the concept of the “third place” within meme communities, painting a vivid picture of the dynamic interplay between memes, and persuasion. The findings peel back the layers of meme culture, contributing to a nuanced understanding of their role in reshaping political engagement.

Bodies of Disappearance

Presenter: Jess Mezo

From Jean Baudrillard to Paul Virilio and Mark Fisher, prominent thinkers of the recent past came to address the question of disappearance not as a relic of the 20th century but as an emerging theme linked to the crisis of becoming that continues to quietly unfold in contemporary societies. However, while most approaches focused on speed, acceleration, and (hyper)capitalist production as potential drivers of this phenomenon, the impact of technological and spatio-ideological factors merits more consideration. This is especially so if one is to account for the profound melancholia, disorientation, and crisis of (political) agency that has emerged over the last decade, with images of an ever-accelerating future decoupling from relentlessly rebooting moments of a horizontally expanding now - an experience of temporality Frederick Jameson called the “perpetual present”.

And while the zeitgeist is increasingly permeated by the themes of obsolescence and being left behind — finding resonances, for example, in the breakout series The Last of Us —, it must be acknowledged that it is not only the figure of the unenhanced human that is subjected to the forces of disappearance but also the built, spatio-ideological environment that he inhabits. As such, in an effort to uncover potential lines of flight, this inquiry explores how contemporary experiences of disappearance, of inhabiting ‘lost futures’ where feelings of fernweh and anemoia reign supreme, lock us into a space of apocalyptic liminality and immobility where one is either captured by the gravity of a Body of Disappearance or is forced to become one.

PoLIS PGR Showcase 2024 Panel 1