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Description

The II International Symposium of the Centre of Discourse Studies, “Discourses of Power, Resistance, and Reaction in the Global Era,” will take place online, from May 19th to the 21st, 2026. The purpose of the symposium is to offer an interdisciplinary and international platform for dialogue and exchange around the ideological and discursive tensions shaping today’s polarized world.

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The symposium will be structured in three thematic days, focusing on:

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  1. Discourses of far-right political groups and reactionary movements, with sub-topics including enemy construction, discursive victimization, and (digital) radicalization

  2. Discourses of movements for social justice and equality, highlighting discursive strategies of resistance, rearticulation, and intersectionality

  3. Human rights as a discursive field in dispute, considering resignifications, structural exclusions, and emerging counter-narratives ​

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The program will include daily keynote lectures, roundtable discussions with prominent scholars, and sessions featuring selected paper presentations, fostering the exchange of critical research on contemporary discourses across diverse geographical, linguistic, and sociopolitical contexts. 

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The official languages of the event are English and Spanish.​​​​​

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2nd Circular PDF 

Program

19 May 2026

Day 1 thematic line: “Discourses of far-right political groups and reactionary movements: construction of the enemy, victimization, and radicalization”

 

Keynote: 14:00-15:00 (CEST/UTC+2) 
Ruth Wodak (Lancaster University)

"Demagoguery and disinformation: Analyzing some (of the many) threats to liberal democracies" 

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Roundtable (in English): 15:15-16:45 (CEST/UTC+2) 
Manuela Caiani (Centre on Social Movement Studies, Università di Firenze)
Michal Krzyzanowski (Uppsala)
Simon Goodman (De Montfort University)​

 

Paper Presentations: 17:00-18:30 (CEST/UTC+2) 

Panel 1 (in English)

  • Emmanouil Takas, "Pseudo-Minority Influence and Moralized Antagonism in Far-Right Discourse: A Social Representations Approach"

  • Gabriela Ernandorena, "The Conceptual Metaphor 'Politics is War' in Brazilian Far-Right Discourse: A Quali-Quantitative Analysis of the Idealized Cognitive Model"

  • Sahar Rasoulikolamaki, "Multimodal stance-taking and ideological alignment in online far-right anti-immigration discourse"

  • Thiago Costa Lethi, "Minorities Who Choose Power: Disavowal, Jouissance, and the Affective Economy of Reactionary Belonging"​

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Panel 2 (in Spanish)

  • Alba Polo-Artal and Alexandre Pichel Vázquez, “'Es que yo también tengo mis derechos': La narrativa del agravio en el electorado de la ultraderecha española (Vox)"

  • Danaé Gómez, "El uso de la voz del exogrupo como estrategia de rechazo y construcción del enemigo en el Discurso neoconservador mexicano"

  • Sara Isabel Perez, "El feminismo como enemigo. El discurso presidencial de Javier Milei en la arena internacional y el discurso anti-género."

  • Sonia Herrera Sánchez, "Del consenso pacifista al securitismo autoritario: discursos mediáticos y digitales en torno a la Global Sumud Flotilla desde el periodismo de paz"

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20 May 2026

Day 2 thematic line: “Social movement discourses: strategies of resistance, rearticulation, and construction of the commons”

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Keynote: 14:00-15:00 (CEST/UTC+2) 

Óscar García Agustín (Aalborg University)

"Movimientos sociales y la solidaridad como discurso: lo colectivo, lo interseccional y lo común"

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Roundtable (in English): 15:15-16:45 (CEST/UTC+2) 

Daniel N. Silva (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina)
Manuela Romano (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
Paolo Gerbaudo (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)

 

Paper Presentations: 17:00-18:30 (CEST/UTC+2) 

Panel 1 (in English)

  • Aida Thaqi Gashi, "Rewriting the script: Discourses of contention in women’s rights movements in Kosovo"

  • Felipe Soto Quiñones, "Constructing (Counter)Discourses on Social Media: The Attack on Asylum Seekers and Refugees’ Residencies in the UK"

  • Paola Giorgis, "In Other Words (IOW) dictionary: Challenging polarized and discriminatory discourses through participatory strategies of resistance, reappropriations, and resignifications"

  • Sebastián Moreno Barreneche, "Memory, Truth and Justice in Uruguay: A sociocultural-semiotic approach to a postdictatorial social movement" ​

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Panel 2 (in Spanish)

  • Angélica Martínez Coronel and Martín Orozco Vázquez, “Verbalizar la resistencia: discurso público de Carlos Manzo, fundador del “Movimiento del sombrero"

  • Edelmira Ccoto Curi, "Impacto de imágenes y discursos de campañas comunicacionales de violencia basada en género en Perú"

  • Débora Fernández Cárcamo, "Estrategias afirmativas del género. Una lectura a partir del análisis del discurso de actorías civiles género-afirmativas durante la década del 2010 en Chile"

  • Marília Araujo Fernandes, "Relatos sobre el aborto y la violencia institucional de género en los círculos de conversación de un grupo de apoyo a las mujeres"​

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21 May 2026

Day 3 thematic line: “Human rights as a discursive field in dispute: resignifications, appropriations, and exclusions”

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Keynote:  14:00-15:00 (CEST/UTC+2) 

Michelle Lazar (National University of Singapore)

"Representing whose rights, anyway?: Politics of inclusion/exclusion and national legitimation of LGBTQ social groups"

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Roundtable: 15:15-16:45 (CEST/UTC+2) 

Karina Ochoa (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Azcapotzalco)
María Martínez Lirola (Universidad de Alicante)
Mirta Antonelli (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba)

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Paper Presentations: 17:00-18:30 (CEST/UTC+2) 

Panel 1 (in English)

  • Ann DeChenne, "Reading for Trace: A Diagnostic Framework for Interrupting Deficit Language in Human Rights Discourse"

  • Egor Smirnov, "Social and Discourse Networks of Misinformation Studies in Economics"

  • Gaetano Giancaspro, "Knowledge in the making: the epistemic construction of European information campaigns on irregular migration" 

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Panel 2 (in Spanish)

  • Eva Dayane Almeida de Góes, "Necrofemicidio: ¿Puede el Estado prevenir el feminicidio negro?"

  • María del Rayo Valerio Cid, "Los derechos humanos como campo discursivo en disputa en América Latina: exclusiones estructurales y contradiscursos emergentes desde una perspectiva crítica"

  • Marilyn Saraí Avalos Huesca, "Los derechos lingüísticos como campo discursivo en disputa: poder, resignificación y resistencia en el paisaje lingüístico de la lengua maya"

  • Pasi Suutari y Sandra Johanna Torres Gil, "Derechos lingüísticos y exclusión en contextos fronterizos"

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Closing Keynote: 18:45-19:45 (CEST/UTC+2) 
Ariadna Estévez (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México)

"El sujeto ciborg de los derechos humanos: el caso de las redadas antiinmigrantes en Estados Unidos"
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Speakers

Ariadna Estévez (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México)

Ariadna Estévez holds a Ph.D. in International Relations (University of Sussex, UK). She is a tenured research professor at the Centre for Research on North America (CISAN) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Member of the National Researchers System Level 3. She teaches the Social Laboratory Introduction to Research Strategies Inspired by Foucault: Genealogy, Anatomopolitics, and Biopolitics/Necropolitics at UNAM’s Faculty of Political and Social Sciences (FCPyS). She is co-coordinator of the research seminars on Human Rights Multidisciplinary Analysis and Critical Legal Studies and Migration at UNAM’s Institute of Legal Research (CISAN-IIJ). Her research interests include: forced migration and asylum in North America; criminal political economy of forced migration; critical studies of law, human rights, and criminal and gender violence; geographies of death and necropolitical spaces; postcolonial studies from biopolitics and necropolitics; necropolitical subjectivities; and digital resistance and justice. She is the author of the books El discurso de derechos humanos en Norteamérica: una gramática en disputa (CISAN-UNAM/UAM Cuajimalpa, 2025), The Necropolitical Production and Management of Forced Migration (Lexington Books, 2021), Necropower in North America: The Legal Spatialization Of Disposability And Lucrative Death (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), and Guerras necropolíticas y biopolítica de Asilo en América del Norte (CISAN-UNAM/UACM, 2018).

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Daniel N. Silva (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina)

Daniel N. Silva is Associate Professor of Socio- and Applied Linguistics at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil. His research examines the mediatization of violence in Brazil, with a focus on alternative communicative models that emerge in empirical sites of resistance. He also investigates the production of a sociolinguistics of hope in Brazilian favelas. With Jerry Lee, he co-authored Language as Hope (Cambridge University Press, 2024), recipient of the 2026 Book Award from the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL).

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Karina Ochoa (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Azcapotzalco)

Karina Ochoa earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in Rural Development from the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM). She is currently a professor and researcher in the Department of Sociology at UAM Azcapotzalco and is a member of the academic core of the Doctoral Program in Feminist Studies at UAM Xochimilco. She has collaborated with various rural organizations in Mexico, as well as with feminist organizations and collectives in Latin America. She is a member of the Network of Feminism(s), Culture, and Power: Dialogues from the South, as well as the Decolonial International Network (DIN) and the continental network Abya Yala Soberana. She has lectured and participated in conferences and seminars in Latin America, the Caribbean, the U.S., Canada, South Africa, the Philippines, and Europe. She is one of the leading figures in the decolonial feminisms of Abya Yala. Among her publications are: “Notes on the Absence of the Notion of the ‘Female Political Subject’ in Enlightenment Thought,” “The Debate on Amerindians: Between the Discourse of Bestialization, Feminization, and Racialization,” “(Re)thinking Law and the Notion of the Indigenous Subject from a Decolonial Perspective,” She is the editor of the book Perspectives on the Colonial Problem and the author of the book Introduction to Postcolonial, Subaltern, and Decolonial Studies.

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Manuela Caiani (Centre on Social Movement Studies, Università di Firenze)

Manuela Caiani is Associate Professor in Political Science at the Scuola Normale Superiore, where she is part of the COSMOS (Centre on Social Movement Studies) research team. She has received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Florence, Italy, in 2006 and is the past recipient of various post doctoral fellowships (Doctoral TRA Fellowship, START Center, 2009, University of Maryland, USA), among which the Marie Curie (Rey Juan Carlos University, Madrid) grant. She has received her national Italian Abilitazione for full professorship in Political Science and in Political Sociology, in 2017. Her research focuses on populism, radical right politics and nationalist movements and parties, social movements and political participation in Europe and qualitative methods of social research. She is Convenor of the Standing Group ‘Political Participation and Social Movements’ of the Italian Political Science Association (SISP) and Coordinator of the Master in Political Science and Sociology of the Scuola Normale Superiore. She is Co-director of the International Observatory on Social Cohesion and Inclusion-OCIS, https://osservatoriocoesionesociale.eu/.

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Manuela Romano (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)

Manuela Romano is Senior Lecturer in English Linguistics at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. In her academic career, she has been active in several fields studying the relations between language, cognition and society, developed within different Funded Research Projects that she has coordinated since 2006 and related all to Socio-Cognitive Approaches to Language and Discourse. One of her main areas of research is the application of Critical, Socio-Cognitive models to Metaphor Theory and Schematization. She has published work on immigration, austerity, Covid-19, new feminisms and protest discourse, among other topics, in journals such as Discourse and Society, Metaphor and Symbol, Metaphor and the Social World, Language and Communication, Review of Cognitive Linguistics. She has recently edited the volumes Metaphor in Socio-Political Contexts: Critical, Socio-Cognitive Approaches (2024) and Polarized Discourse: Language, Cognition and Social Practice (2026), both with Mouton.

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María Martínez Lirola (Universidad de Alicante)

María Martínez Lirola is Professor at the Department of English Philology, University of Alicante, Spain and Research Fellow at the University of South Africa (UNISA). She has been visiting scholar and researcher at several Departments of Linguistics and Education (City University of New York, University of British Columbia, Macquarie University, etc). Her main areas of research are Critical Discourse Analysis and Applied Linguistics. She has participated in several projects on multimodal discourse analysis, didactics and gender studies and she has presented papers in international congresses all over the world. She has published more than 100 articles and eight books. Among them, Main Processes of Thematization and Postponement in English (Peter Lang, 2009); Critical analysis of deshumanizing news photographs on immigrants: examples of the portrayal of non-citizenship (2022, Discourse & Society); Approaching the representation of Sub-Saharan immigrants in a sample from the Spanish press: deconstructing stereotypes (2014, Critical Discourse Studies).

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Michal Krzyzanowski (Uppsala)

Michal Krzyzanowski is Professor of Language & Communication at the Department of English & Communication of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He is one of the key scholars in the field of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), with his work widely followed and cited across several disciplines including linguistics, communication, media studies, social and political psychology, education, and social and political science. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Language and Politics and Co-Editor of The Bloomsbury Advances in Critical Discourse Studies book series. He sits on the editorial boards of such journals as Critical Discourse Studies, Discourse & Society, Language in Society, or Social Semiotics.

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Michelle Lazar (National University of Singapore)

Michelle Lazar is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Linguistics & Theatre Studies at the National University of Singapore. Her research in Critical Discourse Studies centres on gender, sexuality, politics, media and multimodality. In her recent work, she has been particularly interested in discursive/semiotic acts of resistance in socio-political and cultural contexts in the Global South. She is founding editor of the Routledge Critical Studies in Discourse monograph series and is co-editor of the Journal of Language and Politics.

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Mirta Antonelli (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba)

Mirta Antonelli is Professor of Modern Literature with a Master of Arts in Sociosemiotics (CEA) and Ph.D. in Literature (National University of Córdoba – Argentina). She is a tenured professor in the Department of Critical Discourse Studies at the School of Letters within the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities (UNC), teaching Semiotics I and II, Theories of Social Discourse II, and Introduction to Literature. In research, she is listed in Category I of the National System. She has directed research programs and projects in the translinguistic and transdisciplinary field of discourse, focusing on representations of violence and justice, the media construction of current events, and the hegemonic mechanisms of the extractivist model of transnational mega-mining. In connection with these areas, he has supervised more than 30 undergraduate and graduate theses and dissertations, and has published books, chapters, and scholarly articles, raising awareness about human rights in the context of state terrorism and about violence, abuse, and violations in extractivist settings while supporting affected populations. She has presented her individual and collective work to peers at numerous academic events, as well as at conferences and engagements at national and international universities. Since 2018, she has directed Heterotopías, the journal of the Critical Discourse Studies Program.

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Óscar García Agustín (Aalborg University)

Óscar García Agustín is a professor of Democracy and Social Change in the Department of Culture and Communication at Aalborg University (Denmark). He is the director of the DEMOS research group (democracy, migration, and society). His main areas of research include solidarity movements, migration, social movements, populism, and democracy. In his research, he combines critical theory and poststructuralism with an interdisciplinary approach based on discourse analysis, sociology, and political geography. He has served as principal investigator for the project “Geographies of Populism” (DFF, 2020–2024) and is currently leading the newly launched project “Migrant Solidarity Networks” (Velux, 2026–2030). He has just co-edited the book Radical Imagination on Migration in a Turbulent Era (2026) and is the author of Sociology of Discourse (2015), Solidarity and the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Europe, co-authored with Martin Bak Jørgensen (2017), and Left Wing Populism (2020).

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Paolo Gerbaudo (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)

Paolo Gerbaudo is a scholar specializing in digital politics, social movements, political communication, and digital culture. He currently serves as a senior researcher in the Department of Social Sciences, Political History, Theories, and Geography at the Complutense University of Madrid, supported by the Madrid Region's Research Talent programme. His career includes roles as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Research Fellow at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, where he investigated TikTok and Generation Z, and over a decade at King’s College London where he progressed to Reader in Digital Politics and founded and directed the Centre for Digital Culture. He is the author of four influential books, including The Great Recoil (2021) and Digital Parties (2018), which have been translated into multiple languages and 40 book chapters and journal articles which examine a variety of issues from digital populism, to algorithmic social media, online political participation, and more generally the nexus between technology, democracy and geopolitics.

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Ruth Wodak (Lancaster University)

Ruth Wodak is Emerita Distinguished Professor of Discourse Studies at Lancaster University, UK, and affiliated to the University of Vienna. Besides various other prizes, she was awarded the Wittgenstein Prize for Excellence in Research in 1996, an Honorary Doctorate from University of Örebro in Sweden in 2010, and an Honorary Doctorate from Warwick University in 2020. She is past-President of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. 2011, she was awarded the Grand Decoration of Honour in Silver for Services to the Republic of Austria, and 2018, the Lebenswerk Preis for her lifetime achievements, from the Austrian Ministry for Women’s Affairs. She is member of the British Academy of Social Sciences and member of the Academia Europaea. In March 2020, she became Honorary Member of the Senate of the University of Vienna. In June 2021, she was awarded the Bruno Kreisky Prize for her lifetime achievements, in November 2022 she received the Paul Watzlawick Ehrenring of the Medical Society + City of Vienna. She is member of the editorial board of a range of linguistic journals and co-editor of the journals Discourse and Society and Critical Discourse Studies. Her research interests focus on discourse studies, communication in organizations, gender studies, identity politics and the politics of the past, political communication and populism, crisis communication, and on ethnographic methods of sociolinguistic field work. Recent book publications include: Identity Politics Past and Present. Political Discourses from Post-War Austria to the Covid Crisis. (Exeter University Press 2022; with M. Rheindorf); The Politics of Fear. The shameless normalization of far-right populist discourses (Sage 2021, 2nd revised and extended edition); Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Migration Control (Multilingual Matters 2020; with Markus Rheindorf). See http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/profiles/Ruth- Wodak for more information.

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Simon Goodman (De Montfort University)

Simon Goodman is an associate professor in psychology at De Montfort University, UK. He uses discursive psychology to address a number of issues relating to prejudice, hate, inequality and conflict. He is interested in understanding and challenging online hate. Much of this research explores the discursive construction of asylum seekers and refugees, focussing on the ways in which potentially prejudicial arguments against asylum seekers are presented as reasonable and non-prejudicial. In addition, his work focuses on what is, and what is not, considered to be racist particularly with regard to asylum seeking. His research also explores the (largely negative) experiences of asylum seekers in the UK and the ways in which they make complaints and resist their negative presentations. His other interests include conflict, the British public’s understanding of income inequality and high earners, and the ways in which the far-right attempt to present their policies as acceptable and non-racist.

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Comittees

​Organizing Committee

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Amanda Barría Cárdenas (Universidad de Barcelona)
Camila Cárdenas (Universidad Austral de Chile)
Carlos Alza (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Carolina Rea (Centre of Discourse Studies)
Dawson Weehunt (Utrecht University)
Erika Leticia Partida (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Gabriela Luján Giammarini (Universidad Nacional de Villa María)
Ilaria Rizzato (University of Genoa)
Laura Menna (Centre of Discourse Studies)
Lucía de la Presa (Centre of Discourse Studies)
Luis Cárcamo (Universidad Austral de Chile)
Paloma Elvira Ruiz (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
Teun van Dijk (Centre of Discourse Studies)

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With the collaboration of the following groups of the CentreDS:

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El Grupo de Investigación en Discurso y Protesta Social (GIDYP)
Laboratorio de Investigación: Discurso y Derecho (LIDiD)

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Scientific Committee

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Camila Cárdenas (Universidad Austral de Chile)
Eleonora Esposito (Universidad de Navarra)
Ilaria Rizzato (University of Genoa)
Laura Camargo (Universitat de les Illes Balears)
Laura Menna (Centre of Discourse Studies)
Lucía de la Presa (Centre of Discourse Studies)
Luis Cárcamo (Universidad Austral de Chile)
Neyla Pardo (Universidad Nacional de Colombia)
Paloma Elvira Ruiz (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) 
Paul McIlvenny (Aalborg University)
Piotr Cap (University of Łódź)
Viviane Resende (Universidade de Brasília)
Teun van Dijk (Centre of Discourse Studies)

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Registration

Registration prices:

  • €30 for general public

  • Free for CentreDS Global or Local Members

You can find more details about the CentreDS yearly membership here.

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