University of Helsinki
Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties in Western Europe. Into the Mainstream?
Tjitske Akkerman is researcher and an assistant professor at the department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. Akkerman also received her MA and PhD at the same University of Amsterdam. She has been involved in research and evaluations of various initiatives to innovate democratic practices in the Netherlands, and as a visiting fellow at the ANU/Canberra in Australia.
Akkerman is specialized in nationalism, populism, and radical right-wing party. Comparative analyses of the ideologies, electoral successes, strategies and the policy impact of radical right parties in Western Europe are the Akkerman’s main interests in research and teaching.
Akkerman’s work is published among others in Party Politics, West European Politics, Government and Opposition, Patterns of Prejudice, Political Studies, Journalism, Journal of Political Ideologies and Acta Politica. Akkerman co-edited the book Populist Parties in Western Europe. Into the Mainstream? London, Routledge 2016 together with Sarah de Lange and Matthijs Rooduijn.
Populism – A Big Hit in European Political Communication Research
Frank Esser is Professor of International & Comparative Media Research at the University of Zurich. He also holds a Professor II position at the University of Oslo and a chair of Political Communication Section of European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA). Esser is also known for his membership of the steering committee of an EU-funded Cooperation in Science and Technology (“COST”)-Network on Populism and his involvement in the Network of European Political Communication Scholars (NEPOCS) which he also co-founded.
Esser studied in Germany and Britain and taught for several years at US universities. His research focuses on cross-national studies of news journalism and political communication, currently with an emphasis on populism. Essser’s main interests in research are political communication, journalism, news, media systems, cross-nationally comparative research and mediatization.
Esser has published about 130 publications and has been editor of different books. He is the co-editor (with T. Hanitzsch) of Comparing Political Communication. Theories, Cases, and Challenges (Cambridge University Press, 2004), (with Toril Aalberg, Carsten Reinemann, Jesper Stromback & Claes De Vreese) of Populist Political Communication in Europe (Routledge. 2017) and (with De Vreese & Hopmann) of Comparing Political Journalism (Routledge 2016).
Regionalism, Nationalism and “Chameleonic” Populism: The Case of the Italian Lega Nord
Daniele Albertazzi is Senior Lecturer in Europe an Politics, Postgraduate Research Director at the Department of Politics and International Studies of the University of Birmingham (POLSIS). His main interests of research are European populism and neo-nationalism in comparative perspective, party organization, Italian politics and political communication.
Albertazzi has published widely on European politics in international journals such as West European Politics, Party Politics and Government and Opposition. He has also published several books. He is the co-editor (with Duncan McDonnell) of Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy (Palgrave, 2007) and the co-author (with Duncan McDonnell) of Populists in Power (Routledge, 2015).
He co-convenes the Italian Politics Specialist group of the Political Studies Association with Arianna Giovannini and tweets at @DrAlbertazziUK
Tuija Saresma is a senior researcher at the Research Centre for Contemporary Culture, Department of Music, Art and Culture Research, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
Halil Gürhanli is a researcher at the Department of Political and Economic Studies, University of Helsinki.
Niko Hatakka is a researcher at the Centre for Parliamentary Studies at the University of Turku.
Emilia Palonen works as a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Helsinki. Her research has focused on Hungary, Finland and Europe.
Anu Koivunen is Professor of Cinema Studies in the Department of Media Studies at Stockholm University and a visiting scholar at the University of Helsinki. 
She has recently published on Finnish cinema and television history, mediated cultures of emotion and new narratives about Sweden Finns.
As a member of Demokratins drivkrafter: Kontext och särdrag i Finlands och Sveriges demokratier 1890–2020 (Red. Henrik Meinander, Petri Karonen & Kjell Östberg, SLS 2018) she has investigated contemporary media policies in Sweden and Finland and the roles of broadcasting companies in staging, mediating and managing political antagonisms and compromises. A co-edited (with Katariina Kyrölä and Ingrid Ryberg) collection The Power of Vulnerability: Mobilizing Affect in Feminist, Queer, and Anti-racist Media Cultures is published by Manchester University Press in December 2018.