Violence against Public Figures in Democracies

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Juan Albarracín Dierolf and Jonas Wolff are organizing a workshop in the run-up to the ISA

To­gether with Juan Albarracín Dierolf, Jonas Wolff is offering the work­shop “Violence Against Public Figures in Demo­cracies” in the run-up to the annual con­ference of the Inter­national Studies Asso­ciation (ISA) in Chicago. The work­shop on March 1 is jointly orga­nized by the Uni­versity of Illinois Chica­go (UIC), PRIF and the research center “Trans­formations of Poli­tical Violence” (TraCe). It is sponsored by the Foun­dation for German-American Aca­demic Relations (SDAW).

Vio­lence against public figures in demo­cracies has increased in recent years. Much of this vio­lence has so far been observed pri­marily in demo­cracies in the Global South. Re­cently, how­ever, there has also been an in­crease in vio­lence against public figures in the United States and Europe. In res­ponse to this develop­ment, the aca­demic debate has in­creasingly turned to this topic, but despite signi­ficant pro­gress, there are still many gaps in this field of research. 

Against this back­drop, the work­shop “Violence Against Public Figures in Contem­porary Demo­cracies” will bring to­gether experts from both sides of the Atlan­tic to discuss key challenges facing demo­cracies in the Ame­ricas, Europe and be­yond. The aim is to jointly iden­tify what knowledge is al­ready avai­lable on the spatial patterns, tem­poral dyna­mics, causes and conse­quences of tar­geted vio­lence against pub­lic figures and where re­search is still needed. The aim of the work­shop is to prepare a joint publi­cation and a joint inter­national research project.

Jonas Wolff is a board member and head of the Do­mestic Con­flict Program at PRIF and Prin­cipal Inves­tigator at the Research Center “Trans­formations of Political Violence (TraCe)”. Juan Albarracín Dierolf is Assistant Pro­fessor in the Depart­ment of Political Science at the Uni­versity of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and was a Visiting Pro­fessor at PRIF and a Visiting Fellow at TraCe in June and July 2024. Both researchers focus on the trans­formation of political vio­lence in the context and after­math of intra­state conflicts. 

Further infor­mation on the topic can be found on the web­site of the research pro­ject “Vio­lence against Social Activists: Causes, Patterns, and Trans­formations”.