Currently, we seem to observe a rise in the polarization of political opinion, accompanied by a hardening of the tone of political discourse and decreased mutual understanding between different ideological ‘bubbles’.  Our project, The Sound of Disagreement: Embodied Histories of Political Speech 1800-present, seeks to historicize this (perceived) recent culture war, and to draw attention to the development and co-existence of different modes of disagreement in the past two centuries.

The team will study how different groups of newcomers to political speech (be they women, working class activists or populist representatives) navigated the challenges of making themselves heard without being perceived as excessive or intrusive. We analyse how political actors managed disagreement at a practical level, how they articulated differences of opinion, and how embodied and affective experiences of disagreement were shaped. Members of the team will each contribute expertise and empirical insights from their respective case studies to contribute to an over-arching long-term study of the sonic practices of political debate in Europe.

As our junior expert on rhetoric and debate in (recent) EU history, you will contribute to the project by studying the modes of speech of ‘populist’ speakers and representatives, how they have altered the way disagreement has been articulated within the European Parliament’s committees, and how debate in supra-national politics has changed in the last decades of the twentieth century. You will be free to develop your own case-study in order to shape your contribution to the project (in consultation with the other team members), and combine your independent research with collaborative work on the long-term history of political debate together with your colleagues.