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:
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.
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.