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Event: EDMO BELUX Lunch Lecture – Truth or trust? (16 May 2023)

Date: 16 May 2023
Time: 13:00-14:00
Location: Online event

For the third EDMO BELUX Lunch Lecture on 16 May at 13:00-14:00 CEST, we were happy welcome as our guest speaker Eline Severs. Eline is an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Her research interests fall within the field of democratic theory. She is especially interested in democratic representation, the relationships between civil society and democratic governance, citizens’ conceptions of democracy, and what it means to organise democratic inclusion. Her research on the legitimacy of representative democracies seeks to shed light on the meaning of the so-called crisis of representation in contemporary democracies. She studies (through interviews, focus groups and the study of everyday political talk) how elected representatives and citizens give meaning to their expectations toward and disappointments with representative democracy.

In her Lunch Lecture presentation, Eline presented the contribution she prepared for the recent VUB Poincaré book on Truth(s). She took stock of the extant literature on truth decay or post-truth regimes, rejected the argument that truth decay is a consequence of postmodernism and argued that efforts at fact-checking and civic education alone will not suffice to turn around the tide. What is needed is a restoration of trust as the foundation of inter-subjectively held truths.

Download the presentation slides here (pdf)!

The EDMO BELUX Lunch Lectures are a series of informal gatherings on research topics such as disinformation, hate speech, polarisation, and digitalisation. During each Lunch Lecture, a guest speaker presents their work in a 30-minute talk, after which we open the floor for discussion. Lunch Lectures take place online and can be joined by everyone who is interested and who has registered beforehand.

The previous webinars in the series of Lunch Lectures:

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