Democracy and Europe
Helen Boaden, David Ermes, Aurelien Mondon, Karl-Erik Norrman, Agnès Poirier, Sofia Vasilopoulou

• Saturday 10 June 2017, 4.00PM to 5.30pm
• Free admission
  Booking required
• Ron Cooke Hub, University of York (map|getting to campus)
• Wheelchair accessible

Event details

With impending French and German elections and the increasing influence and success of European extremist political parties, a range of speakers will reflect on the future of democracy in Europe in the wake of Brexit. Ambassador Karl-Erik Norrman, Founder and Secretary General of the European Culture Parliament, opens the discussions with a keynote address on the role of culture in the pursuit of democracy.

Supported by The Morrell Centre for Toleration which is generously funded by the C and JB Morrell Trust.

Speakers:

• Helen Boaden, former Controller of BBC Radio 4
• David Ermes, Christian Democratic Party (CDU), Germany
• Aurelien Mondon, University of Bath
• Karl-Erik Norrman, European Culture Parliament
• Agnès Poirier, Political commentator and journalist
• Sofia Vasilopoulou, University of York

About the speakers

Helen Boaden is the former Controller of BBC Radio 4, Director of BBC News and of BBC Radio. She has recently returned from a Fellowship at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University where her visit coincided with President Trump's first 100 days in office

David Ermes is a communications and politics professional, who works as the Senior Press Advisor to the Christian Democrats (CDU) party at its headquarters in Berlin.

Previously he worked as a senior advisor to an MP in parliament on issues relating to the parliamentary committees on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth as well as Humanitarian Rights and Humanitarian Aid. He is a political scientist with a background in law and peace and conflict studies. His main focus is on agenda setting and policy strategies.

He is a digital resident and started out coding his first website in pure html more than 15 years ago and is still deeply in love with the age of information technology. David claims that complexity is not an obstacle but a chance to solve societal problems of the 21st century. @davidermes

Dr Aurelien Mondon is a Senior Lecturer in French and comparative politics at the University of Bath, working on racism, populism, the far right and the crisis of democracy.  He joined Bath’s Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies in September 2012.

Working primarily in the recent mainstreaming of the extreme right, and the impact of neo-racist and right-wing populist discourse on liberal democracies, his research interests include:

• Racism, 'neo-racism' and Islamophobias in elite discourse
• Right-wing populism and the people as a ‘threat’ to democracy
• The extreme and radical rights and their influence on mainstream politics (historical and contemporary)
• The relationship between voting and democracy. 

Ambassador Karl-Erik Norrman is Founder (2002) and Secretary General of the European Cultural Parliament (ECP), the only Pan-European forum for cultural personalities from all sectors of Arts. The ECP has 160 members from 43 European countries. The ECP initiates projects and workshops, meets in plenary session in different European cities each year and discusses broad European themes, such as Democracy, Intercultural dialogue, European Cohesion, Media quality, etc.

As a Swedish diplomat for 30 years he served in Moscow, Peking, Geneva and Rome, dealing mainly with foreign policy, trade negotiations, cultural affairs, development cooperation, humanitarian affairs and the United Nations. As Ambassador since 1989 he has been posted to Spain and Sweden. From 1995 he was Executive Member of the Commission for Sweden Promotion Abroad at the Foreign Ministry.

He is the author of more than 30 books about democracy, world population, Germany, China, India, Mongolia, UN, theatre, opera, design, food, European identities and football. He is a Lecturer at the Institute of Cultural Diplomacy, ICD, Berlin, and participates in the public debate in Swedish, German, British, Scandinavian and other International media and conferences.

Agnès Poirier is a Paris born and London educated journalist and writer. A regular contributor to the British and American media (The Guardian, The Observer, The Times, BBC, Sky News, The Nation, CNN, among others) and the UK Editor for the French political weekly Marianne, she is the author of four books including A French Woman's Take on the English (Weidenfeld and Nicolson). Her forthcoming book, Left Bank, a cultural history of Paris 1940-1950, will be released by Bloomsbury early 2018. She has taught at Sciences-Po, Paris, and preselects British films for the Cannes film festival.

Dr Sofia Vasilopoulou (PhD, LSE) is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of York. Her work examines political dissatisfaction with democracy and democratic institutions across Europe. Specific themes include Euroscepticism, extremism and loss of faith in traditional politics. She leads an ESRC Future Leaders Project entitled ‘Euroscepticism: dimensions, causes and consequences in times of crisis’. For information on the project, please visit http://euroscepticism.org/. She is the author of Far Right Parties and Euroscepticism Patterns of Opposition (ECPR Press), and the co-author of The Golden Dawn's Nationalist Solution: Explaining the rise of the far right in Greece (Palgrave Macmillan 2015 with Daphne Halikiopoulou). She is the convenor of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Standing Group on Political Parties.

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