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Maria Heller

Title of the presentation:
European identity in formation, emerging Eurosceptic discourses

Short abstract of the presentation:
Identities are complex constructions elaborated in concrete communicative situations. Identity constructions may vary according to various criteria among which collective assumptions, communicative culture, individual aspirations. The lecture is based on concrete actual research tackling the problem of conflicting identities in various communicative situations: It also focuses on the elaboration of new forms of identity and the struggle between old and new forms of identity. Thus the phenomenon of emerging Eurosceptic discourses will be treated as an example.

Short biography:
Areas of expertise: Communication Theory, Public Sphere, Discourse Analysis Maria HELLER is a sociologist and director of the Institute of Sociology at Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Budapest. She is the programme director of the Sociology major (BA and MA) and of a special 3-year study-programme: Communication and Media Sociology. Coordinator of several large international research and exchange programmes, she is also Vice-Dean for International Relations of the Faculty of Social Sciences. Her background is in sociology and in linguistics, and her research interests include media and communication, theories of the public sphere, discourse analysis and new ICTs. She teaches lectures and seminars on various related topics. She has done research and published in several languages on the structure of the public sphere; discourse analysis of public debates (national identity, demography, NATO and EU enlargement, globalisation, Eurosceptic discourses); discursive strategies of public and private speakers; opposition between public and private in communications; models of communications; value analysis of mass culture, commodity aesthetics; symbolic politics and the European public sphere; the structure of the public sphere in state socialism and in pluralist societies; new perspectives on 21st-century communications; discursive strategies in advertising and the sociology of games. She is a member of several Hungarian and international scholarly associations and has participated in international conferences, educational programmes and workshops in France, Finland, Great Britain, Norway, Poland, Turkey, Portugal, Spain, Germany and the USA and is a member in international scientific evaluation committees (ESF, Finnish and Norwegian Academy). She participated in various international research programmes, among which “Changing Media - Changing Europe” organized by the European Science Foundation and she was a “Freedom of Speech” guest professor at Bergen University in 2006-2007.