Gladly, I’ve received funding for the year 2013 from the Kone Foundation to start off my PhD work on the Finns Party, Finnish political culture and populism. This means I’ll start working on the study in January. Still waiting for information about an office space – hopefully with other political sociology researchers at the University.
My research proposal can be found here (4-page PDF), though it will very likely be altered to some extent once I get the work going. However, many issues such as the connection between gender and conservative politics do interest me and will likely be part of the research. Additionally, I hope to be part of developing a framework of analyzing populism via Laurent Thévenot’s sociology of engagements.
I’ll also be presenting my work at a seminar, “On Populism and on Politics” on the 18th of December, 2012 (next week’s Tuesday!). I’m preparing slides that will present what I’ve done so far in a condensed form, so I’ll upload them here after the event.