Below you can find the recordings of the lectures by the DELIAH team.

When Jokes go to Court: Humorous Expression and Free Speech Adjudication

Professor Dr. Alberto Godioli (University of Groningen, the Netherlands) spoke about the relationship between humour and freedom of expression.

Hot-Dog-Shaped Earth and Biomosquitoes: Teenagers, Conspiracy Talk, and Humor

Prof. Dr. Anastasiya Astapova (University of Tartu, Estonia) gave a lecture about disinformation, conspiracy theories, and humour.

The Power of Political Cartoons

Cartoonist Tjeerd Royaards (Cartoon Movement, the Netherlands) gave a talk titled ‘The power of cartoons’, in which he explored why simple lines on paper are so effective at mocking the powerful.

From April 20 to April 24, the members of DELIAH came together in Estonia for our annual project meeting. The first half of the week took place at the University of Tartu. With the project already underway for over a year, we took the occasion to take stock of what we have done in the past 12 months and what we will being doing in the future.

DELIAH has made a lot of progress. We conducted a meta-analysis of the relationship between humour and democracy, created a database of comedians, and teamed up with our sister projects to produce a series of policy recommendations for the European Commission’s Democracy Shield. We are also currently processing the data from the focus-groups we conducted throughout Europe over the last few months. Click on the links below to find out more about these initiatives (and visit our Zenodo for a full overview of our research).

Humour and democracy

Database female/non-cisgender comedians

European Democracy Shield

How do Europeans think about humour?

The second half of our annual gathering took place at Tallinn University, where we ran a public-facing event: a two-day workshop for PhD students, titled Humour Matters: Laughter and Democracy.

A series of lectures, workshops, and seminars provided a broad overview of current research into humour. The first day, thematically titled Foundations & Practices, started with a joint lecture by Anastasiya Fiadotava (Estonian Literature Museum) and Guillem Castañar Rubio (Tallinn University), who explained how and why we study humour.

This overview was followed by a lecture on how to address harmful humour on online platforms by a member of DELIAH’s External Advisory Board (EAB), Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández (University College Dublin), with special attention to community-driven moderation, such as Community Notes on X.

The final event of the day was a workshop by the Dutch cartoonist Tjeerd Royaards, who explained why political cartoons can be such a powerful medium to communicate opinions and who challenged participants to draw their own cartoons.

In the evening, stand-up comedians Ana Falcon, Stewart Johnson, Jana Levitina, and Kelly Stone gave a performance, followed by a panel discussion where they explained their approach to and views on humour.

On the second day, we talked about the challenges and stakes in the field of humour, starting with a seminar examining humour scandals in Spain run by Carmen Maíz-Arévalo (Complutense University of Madrid).

A second DELIAH EAB member, Dennis Meyhoff Brink (DIS in Copenhagen), gave a compelling presentation titled The Proliferation of Satirical Depictions of Muhammad in the Age of Their Prohibition in which he argued that the number of satirical depictions of Mohammad has actually increased since the Danish cartoon controversy of 2005-06 and the attack on Charlie Hebdo in 2015.

Finally, we discussed ongoing research in various projects with:

• Andrew Bricker (Ghent University) from DELIAH

  DELIAH investigates the role of humour in fostering democratic literacy, with a particular focus on how comedic practices shape citizens’ understanding of democratic norms, values, and conflicts. The project examines humour as a form of civic communication that can both strengthen democratic engagement and contribute to exclusion or polarization. Through interdisciplinary methods, DELIAH explores how humour operates across media, education, and public discourse, and how democratic competencies related to humour can be developed and taught.

  Learn more

• Alberto Godioli (University of Groningen) from FORHUM: Forum for Humor and the Law

  FORHUM is an international platform dedicated to exploring the relationship between humour, freedom of expression, and the law. Bringing together legal scholars, humour researchers, practitioners, and artists, the project documents and analyses legal cases involving satire and humour from a comparative perspective. FORHUM aims to improve understanding of how humour is evaluated in legal contexts and to support more nuanced approaches to humour-related disputes in democratic societies.

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• Carmen Maíz-Arévalo (Universidad Complutense Madrid) from HUMLIT: Humour Literacy: Reframing Conflict and Controversy in the Public Sphere

  HUMLIT focuses on humour literacy as a key civic competence for navigating conflict, controversy, and offence in the public sphere. The project examines how individuals and communities interpret, negotiate, and respond to humour in politically sensitive contexts. By combining discourse analysis, case studies, and pedagogical approaches, HUMLIT aims to develop tools that help citizens critically engage with humour while fostering democratic dialogue and resilience.

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• Johanna Koljonen Pedersen (Tampere University) from Larpocracy: Live Action Role-Play and Democratic Participation

  Larpocracy explores the use of live action role-playing (LARP) as an experimental and participatory method for democratic engagement. The project investigates how embodied, playful simulations can help participants experience political decision-making, conflict, and cooperation from multiple perspectives. By blending performance, game design, and political theory, Larpocracy examines the democratic potential of immersive play as a tool for civic education and participation.

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• Sini Hassinen and Sara Brandellero (Leiden University) from Democracy in Action: Participatory Practices, Media, and Civic Engagement

  Democracy in Action examines contemporary forms of participatory democracy, focusing on the role of media, communication practices, and grassroots initiatives in shaping civic engagement. The project analyses how citizens interact with democratic institutions and each other through both traditional and digital media, with attention to inclusion, deliberation, and democratic innovation. It aims to identify practices that strengthen active citizenship and democratic resilience in changing media environments.

  Learn more

• Ana Yara Postigo Fuentes (University of Düsseldorf) from ARENAS: Analysis of and Responses to Extremist Narratives

All in all, it was productive and successful week. We exchanged ideas and insights about humour and democracy and strengthened the bonds between DELIAH researchers and between DELIAH and other research projects, facilitating further cooperation in the future. We are looking forward to our third annual meeting in Bratislava next spring!

DELIAH team members Alberto Godioli and Tjeerd Royaards gave an interactive workshop at the festival titled The importance of humour for democracy: good humour vs bad humour. In the workshop, we present different court cases that involve humour in one way or another. We explain the case and its background, and after the explanation we ask the audience what they think the outcome of the case was. Was the cartoonist or satirist sanctioned by the court, or did the judges decide that no line was crossed? After we take stock of the audience response, the actual outcome of the case is revealed.

The workshop not only deals with different types of humor, but also different types of offences, such as defamation, hate speech and intellectual property infringement (in the case of parodies). The idea behind the session is to encourage reflection on the role of humour within the public debate. As Alberto Godioli puts it: “In some cases, the humour might be awful, but it’s lawful.”

You can watch our session here:

Tjeerd Royaards also gave a session about the power of political cartoons:

There will be a lecture covering various aspects of humour every Tuesday between April 14 and July 14. If you want to attend any of the lectures (in German), here is the full program (click to enlarge):

DELIAH team member and political cartoonist Tjeerd Royaards will give a workshop and a lecture about the power of political cartoons om June 9. The workshop will be a hand-on immersion into political cartoons, challenging participants to visualize their own opinion and create a sharp image themselves. The lecture will focus on why cartoons can have such an impact and what tools cartoonists use to create their work.

Workshop - June 9, 10.00 - 12:00

Lecture - June 9, 18:15

DELIAH will be taking part in the OppAttune Forum in Sarajevo, hosted by PRONI, which brings together researchers and practitioners from across Europe and several post-conflict contexts to discuss strategies for countering “everyday extremism,” understood as the normalization of hostile political discourse and dehumanizing narratives in democratic societies. The event aims to produce a set of recommendations for strengthening democratic resilience and political literacy.

At the forum, DELIAH Academic Coordinator Andrew Bricker will be taking part on a panel dedicated to “Common Agendas: community-led counter strategies against political extremism and hybrid threats.” His contribution, “Humour, Counter-Humour, and Democratic Participation,” will focus on how DELIAH’s research and interventions around humour can help build political literacy, strengthen local agency, and develop cultural tools that communities can use to counter anti-democratic forms of humour.

The OppAttune project has been working for the last three years on tracking, understanding, and developing interventions to counter everyday extremism across fifteen European countries and beyond.

At the meeting in Sarajevo, OppAttune will establish a dialogue between all participants to create recommendations using OppAttune’s toolkits, concepts and dialogical methods and the professional experiences and best practice of colleagues from a variety of post-conflict contexts.

What kind of Democrat are you?

Take the interactive test that OppAttune has developed:

As part of the 18th Spanish Congress of Political Science and Public Administration, this panel will explore the role of cultural and entertainment practices in political life. More specifically, ‘cultural and entertainment practices’ refer to activities related to the arts and creative industries, such as theatre, cinema, music, photography, literature, television and radio programmes, video games, and less formalised activities such as urban art.

Participants will address the political dimension of these practices from empirical and normative perspectives, as well as examine their broader cultural significance. The panel will be chaired by two DELIAH members: Carmelo Moreno and Marcos Engelken-Jorge.

The congress will take place in Granada, Spain, from 9 to 11 September 2026. The deadline for submitting paper proposals is 31 March 2026.

Useful links:

Congress website (in Spanish)

Information about the panel (in Spanish)

Info for participants (in Spanish)

Key dates (in Spanish)

We are happy to announce we will be present at the International Journalism Festival, taking place in Perugia, Italy, between April 15 and April 18. We will be conducting two workshops at this edition of the festival. More info below; you can check out the entire festival program here.

The importance of humour for democracy: good humour vs bad humour

11:30 - 12:20 Friday 17/04/2026 - Sala del Dottorato

In this session, hosted by Alberto Godioli and Tjeerd Royaards, we will explore satire and the limits to freedom of expression. Using several court cases involving visual humor that was published in newspapers or in online media as examples, we will explain which arguments are used to either allow or sanction certain kinds of humor. Before we reveal the outcome of each court case, we will gauge how the audience would have judged, and afterwards we will explain the legal arguments that lead to a verdict.

This workshop will give insight into the role visual satire has within journalism, how it contributes to the public debate, but also how it sometimes derails into racism, sexism or hate speech. Along the way we will touch upon subjects like copyright law, the parody exception and to what extent public figures should be able to take a joke.

The power of editorial cartoons

15:00 - 15:50 Friday 17/04/2026 - Sala del Dottorato

In our signature workshop, we (cartoonists Emanuele Del Rosso and Tjeerd Royaards) show the participants what makes political cartoons tick. Why are cartoons one of the first things to be banned by authoritarian regimes? Why do political leaders (especially those who don’t like democracy all that much) fear what, in essence, is no more than a few lines on paper? Join us to find out the power of cartoons in this hands-on workshop that will challenge you to make your own political cartoon. Drawing skills are not required!

Humor Matters: Laughter and Democracy is an international, interdisciplinary workshop that brings together scholars and practitioners to examine humour as both a democratic resource and a site of conflict. Humour can enable critique, solidarity, and resistance, but it can also foster exclusion, polarization, and harm.

The workshop explores these tensions through the lenses of humour theory, legal boundaries, political satire, and civic education. Its central aim is to identify key research questions at the intersection of humour and democracy and to equip students with the conceptual tools and methodological approaches needed to address these questions through future research projects.

Program

The two-day filled with lectures, panels and hands-on workshops. You can find the full program, including lecture abstracts and recommended reading, here:

See full program

Participation and priority

Participation is open to PhD students. Places are limited and allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, while observing the following order of priority:

• PhD students of Estonian universities (accommodation and travel costs will be covered by DELIAH project).

• PhD students who are members of DELIAH, Larpocracy, and Democracy in Action and PhD students from ENLIGHT partner universities (whose expenses must be covered by their home institution).

Applicants outside these categories may be considered subject to availability.

The registration form is open until February 22.

Register here

If you have any questions, please contact us at ismet.suleimanov@ut.ee.

Organising committee: Anastasiya Astapova, Ismet Suleimanov (University of Tartu, Horizon Democratic Literacy and Humour (DELIAH) project), Anastasiya Fiadotava (Estonian Literature Museum), Guillem Castañar Rubio (Tallinn University).

The project “Cooperation between universities to promote doctoral studies” (2021–2027.4.04.24-0003) is co-funded by the European Union.

Since 1988, the International Society for Humor Studies has promoted an annual conference that gathers scholars from all over the world to discuss the phenomenon of humor. Linguists, psychologists, political scientists, lawyers, computational engineers, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, communication experts, among others, get together in paper panels, roundtables and lectures of keynote speakers.

In 2026, for the first time ever, the conference will be held in Brazil, more specifically in Niterói, at the Federal Fluminense University, between July 6th and 10th.

This will be the first humor conference in South America (and in the Global South), and also the 50th anniversary of the first event dedicated to the interdisciplinary discussion of humor, that took place in Cardiff, Wales, in 1976.

The conference website is live (ishs2026.org) and the call for papers and panel proposals are open. Early bird registration has started this week (January 19th).

Please check the deadlines and guidelines for your proposal(s), as well as more info about the conference venue, how to get to Brazil, what Niterói has to offer in terms of nature, tourism and culture, and much more.

In an age marked by rising autocratization, democratic backsliding, gender backlash, and science scepticism, fostering strong democratic skills is more urgent than ever. This panel presents early results from three Horizon Europe projects (Larpocracy, DELIAH, and DemocracyInAction) and explores how innovative arts-based and game-driven methodologies empower individuals and communities to develop key democratic skills such as empathy, critical thinking, dialogue, and civic engagement.

Beyond sharing these initial findings, the discussion will focus on strategies that effectively counter disinformation and exclusion, reinforce resilience against anti-democratic tendencies, and expand the possibilities for inclusive civic participation.

Speakers:

Sarah L. Bowman (Larpocracy)

Sara Brandellero & Kamila Krakowska Rodrigues (DiA)

Marcos Engelken Jorge & Carmelo Moreno (DELiAH)

Register for the event

The Cartoons in Court team includes several DELIAH members: Alberto Godioli (University of Groningen, coordinator), Andrew Bricker (Ghent University), and Tjeerd Royaards (Cartoon Movement). It also includes Vicky Breemen (Utrecht University) and Ana Pedrazzini (Conicet – Comahue National University).

The exhibition will be featured at the 44th International Exhibition of Caricature, Press Cartoon and Humor in Saint-Just-le-Martel, France from September 27 to October 5, 2025.

Since at least the early days of political caricature in the mid-eighteenth century, visual humor has played a vital role in public debate. Its importance has been recognized in several influential cases from widely different contexts. In the words of the Supreme Court of the United States:

Despite their sometimes caustic nature, from the early cartoon portraying George Washington as an ass down to the present day, graphic depictions and satirical cartoons have played a prominent role in public and political debate. […] From the viewpoint of history, it is clear that our political discourse would have been considerably poorer without them. (Hustler v. Falwell, 1988, at 53-55)

Similar statements can be found in landmark rulings about humour in general – and visual satire in particular – from across the globe. Yet, despite such supposedly robust judicial defences of visual humor, the outlook for cartoonists and satirists today is not always as bright as these initial quotations might suggest. Cartoonists and satirists at large are typically among the first victims of crackdowns by authoritarian governments all over the world; and even within democratic contexts, the relationship between visual satire and the law is often characterized by inconsistent and unpredictable outcomes.

Designed to Provoke features a selection of legal cases from the eighteenth century to the present, grouped into five sections:

1. Defamation and Reputational Rights

2. Blasphemy and Obscenity

3. Public order and Incitement

4. Parody and Intellectual Property

5. Charlie Hebdo: From the Muhammad Cartoons Case to the Present

Ten years after the deadly terrorist attacks against Charlie Hebdo and the Je Suis Charlie chants, debates about humour and freedom of expression are more relevant – and more heated – than ever. As mandated by Articles 19 and 20 of the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, freedom of expression may be legitimately restricted in some cases, such as defamation or incitement to discrimination, hostility, and violence. However, as long established by human rights jurisprudence, it is crucial to maintain a distinction between subjective feelings of shock and offence (which should never be sufficient to restrict expression) and the objective harm caused by unlawful speech. Learning to respond to ideas we find offensive through dialogue (as opposed to censorship or violence) is essential to democracy, and should play a key role in civic education. We hope that this exhibition, with its curated selection of satirical works from all over the world, can contribute to fostering such a dialogue.

The exhibition shows the contested artworks along with an analysis of the court proceedings and outcome of the case. Here are some of the works that are included in the exhibition:

We were also happy to see Luisa F. Isaza-Ibarra (University of Groningen) make her first major conference presentation as part of DELIAH: Please don’t let me be misunderstood: Assessing context and intentions in humor cases from Latin America. Her preliminary findings show that Latin American judges would benefit from the insights of humor scholars. Their work on topics like genre or prior ethos would help them make better decisions. Interestingly, Luisa also tied for first place in the joke telling competition!

For many of us, this was a chance to reconnect with colleagues and share updates. For Olsen Zobar (Ghent University), it was his first ISHS—filled with intellectual conversations, networking opportunities, and a deep dive into current literature in humor research.

We left with new questions, useful feedback, and a renewed sense of where humor meets public life and democratic culture. We are soon going to follow up in detail on our takeaways of ISHS 2025.

Find out more on ISHS 2025

ISHS 2025 Conference Program

400KB ∙ PDF file

Download

If you would like to view the complete ISHS 2025 Conference Program, download the file to find out more.

Download

ISHS 2025 Book Of Abstracts

1.38MB ∙ PDF file

Download

If you would like to view the ISHS 2025 Conference Book of Abstracts, download the file to find out more.

Download

Last week, four DELIAH members took part in the ENLIGHT European Dialogue, hosted by the University of the Basque Country in San Sebastian. Centered on the theme “Co-creation of knowledge together with the Cultural & Creative sectors”, the two-day event brought together academics from the 10 ENLIGHT partner universities and external partners to network, exchange ideas, and foster bottom-up collaborations in the Culture and Creativity domain, one of ENLIGHT’s six flagship areas.

During one of the thematic parallel sessions, Aitor, Amber, and Olsen presented the DELIAH project and its predecessor, HACIDA. This scientific research network, focused on “Humor and Conflict in the Digital Age”, was funded by an ENLIGHT RISE Grant and helped establish the topic and members of DELIAH.

The event was a great opportunity to share the project's origins and gain valuable feedback on our future directions. Discussions touched on how to translate academic research into accessible policy reports and toolkits, as well as how to build a shared research language among researchers from different disciplines and backgrounds.

We’re excited to take these conversations forward – follow along to see how they unfold in the months ahead.

DELIAH-partner Cartoon Movement was at the International Journalism Festival last week: cartoonists Stellina Chen from Taiwan and Tjeerd Royaards from the Netherlands gave a workshop on the role and impact of political cartoons.

Why are cartoonists so often targeted by dictators and how are cartoonists coping with the rising number of autocratic regimes in Europe and the world? Stellina and Tjeerd showcase the work of a number of cartoonists who are currently in trouble because of their work and, using examples of their own work, they also explain why cartoons can have such an impact and what tools a cartoonist uses to create an effective image.

You can watch a recording of the workshop here.