Unpacking the Framing of Democracy in EU Institutional Discourses on Disinformation Mitigation Abstract How do European institutions frame democracy in their discourses and policies about disinformation mitigation? Disinformation is often presented by EU institutions as a threat to democracy that must be resolved (Navarro et al., 2025), which has led to the development of multiple intervention strategies. […]
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Register here Political Identity as a Feature of Democracy: Belonging, Rejection, and Absence Political identities are often taken for granted as attachments to parties or ideological camps. Yet citizens differ profoundly in how much politics matters to who they are, in whether they define themselves through belonging or rejection, and in whether politics plays any […]
Are parliaments at risk of becoming irrelevant? Abstract Parliaments have been conceptualised as a core institution of our representative democracies – they are meant to embody the link between public and governance. However, in a context of declining levels of trust, increased polarisation and misinformation, are they increasingly becoming irrelevant in people’s imaginary? Parliaments drive […]
Register here When We Are Not in the Room: Designing Feminist Institutional Change for Resilience and Reactivation Feminist institutionalism has long shown that feminist institutional change is rarely one-shot, given the “genderedness” of organisations/institutions (Benschop & Verloo, 2006), the “nested newness” of reform efforts (Mackay, 2014), and multiple forms of resistance (Tildesley, Lombardo & Verge, 2022). Recent work argues that inclusive reforms tend to follow cycles of repetition through which […]
The unintended consequences of depolarization treatments (in the US) Abstract Many interventions exist for reducing toxic polarization. However, a possibility is that these interventions that aim to help political opponents get along have unintended side effects. For example, they may increase other forms of intolerance, reduce civic engagement, or reduce people’s willingness to confront prejudices or misinformation. We tested these possibilities […]
Register here The international norm of Gender-Sensitive Parliaments: Navigating Inequality and Inclusion in Democracies under Pressure Bio Petra Ahrens is Academy of Finland Research Fellow at Tampere University, Finland. Her research focuses on gender policies and politics in the European Union and its institutions, gender equality in Germany, gender-sensitive parliaments, and transnational civil society. Alongside […]
How to study platform influences on digital democracies Abstract Digital platforms do not merely host democratic debate — they structure visibility, shape information flows, and influence how political opinions are formed. To understand these effects, we need theory-driven and longitudinal approaches that trace communicative processes over time, combining digital trace data, sequence-based analyses, and innovative […]
Register here Informational Autocracies and State-Sponsored Disinformation - On the Possibilities and Limits of Institutionalized Brainwashing Abstract In today’s information landscape, the rise of “spin dictatorships” or informational autocracies shows how state actors, economic elites, and digital platforms cooperate to sustain mass persuasion. Instead of relying mainly on repression, these regimes manage information, engineer public […]
Register here Book launch of The Oxford Handbook of Belgian Politics, a new volume co-edited by Prof. Min Reuchamps (UCLouvain), Prof. Marleen Brans (KULeuven), Prof. Petra Meier, (Uantwerpen) and Prof. Emilie van Haute (ULB). The Book launch will bring together members of the diplomatic community, policymakers, media representatives, some of the 97 contributors to the volume, and […]
For the second year in a row, BrIAS partners with OHME to present five days of events at the intersection of arts and society, with a special emphasis on the BrIAS Season's theme: democratic challenges. The programme moves between afternoon conferences and evening presentations, film screenings and music, with an exhibition to discover throughout the […]
Important notice: The Forum and the Closing Ceremony have separate registration links. Click on the images for their respective registration links. The Brussels Institute for Advanced Studies (BrIAS) invites you to a forum on The Right to the City: making Brussels culture a space of freedom, inclusion and democratic resistance. About the Event English At […]