HISTORY GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE
Ninth Annual Conference
Popular Politics: Violence, Repression, and Responses
Keynote Speaker, Dr. Federico finchelstein
Date & Time: Thursday, April 2, 2026 from 8:30AM - 5PM
The History Graduate Students Association (HGSA) at Stony Brook University, State University of New York invites all graduate students in history and other affiliated humanities and social sciences disciplines to attend our 9th annual interdisciplinary graduate conference, “Popular Politics: Violence, Repression, and Responses.” Looking at contemporary politics, Argentinian historian Federico Finchelstein, notes that “crisis, xenophobia, and populism characterize our new century. But these traits are not new nor were they simply reborn in our present". In his influential 2017 book, From Fascism to Populism in History, Finchelstein invites us to explore the ways one can understand the apparent rebirth of populism, fascism and other political shifts, through their ideologies, economic policies, cultural, and societal impacts. With this, one can, as Finchelstein says, "comprehend the history of its adoption and reformulation over time" and see if this century has or not “left behind the history of violence, fascism, and genocide so central to the twentieth century”. This year's conference explores popular politics through the lens of violence, repression, and responses. In understanding political shifts, crisis, ideologies, democratization, and the collapse of democracies, this conference offers a space of dialogue, reflection and to ask how these were conceived, interpreted, questioned, and how the current political trends pose threats to democracy, equality, and academia.