The Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark, invites applications for two three-year full-time postdoctoral researchers to join the research project “The Politics of Shaming and Shamelessness: How Elite Rhetoric Fuels Hostility and Tolerance for Political Violence”, funded by the Carlsberg Foundation (Semper Ardens: Accelerate) and headed by Associate Professor Tobias Widmann. The starting date is flexible and subject to mutual agreement but expected to be between December 2026 and February 2027.

The project

Healthy political discourse is the lifeblood of democracy. Yet across Western democracies, discourse has grown markedly more hostile, and physical assaults on politicians, attacks on minorities, and mobs storming legislatures show how hostility increasingly spills over into political violence. The project examines how elites, through their rhetoric, contribute to this development. It focuses on the emotion of shame and two c...