From radical rightwing populism to climate politics: many of today’s political developments seem to revolve around identity in more ways than one. While some acknowledge the importance of identity in an age with growing inequalities, others argue that focusing on identity in the political arena distracts from the “real cause” of contemporary political polarization: economic inequality. 

In the first week of this summer programme, we will examine the concept of identity through an academic lens, and analyse how it intersects with other important concepts such as culture, class, race, sexuality, gender, and ethnicity. In the second week, we will turn to current political debates that are strongly steered by ‘identity politics’, most dominantly those around populism, globalization, environmentalism, and antiracist social movements.

In our lectures, the students will be given the theoretical background to participate in empirical discussions that will be the basis of our interactive online seminars and class debates. In these sessions, students will work together to disentangle empirical manifestations of identity politics, unravelling how both are so closely bound together. Students will use their home context as nodes that are deeply entrenched in local and global debates about democracy.  

Students will experience studying in a supportive international environment hosted by the University of Amsterdam. The lectures and all course materials are in English. Participants in the course will develop study skills and become acquainted with learning methods that will give them an advantage as they continue their education at university. 

Dr. Luuc Brans is political-cultural sociologist with a keen interest in anything at the intersection of culture and politics. He is currently a Lecturer at the Erasmus University in Media and Communication and a Postdoc at the Sociology department of KU Leuven University. His current research investigates the link between inequality and climate politics in fashion, which was also the domain of his PhD in Sociology (KU Leuven). He is currently an affiliate of Harvard University’s Weatherhad Centre for International Affairs, while he was a visiting scholar for two terms at Harvard’s Sociology department during his PhD. Luuc gladly draws on various social science disciplines, as evidenced in his MSc (with distinction) in Nationalism Studies from Edinburgh University and his BSc (with distinction) in Political Science from the University of Amsterdam. He has published in various peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes and has enjoyed teaching the generation of tomorrow since 2015.

Want to get to know more about studying at the University of Amsterdam? Follow us on social media and join our summer community. Get a feel for our summer school vibe and our academic and social community, and learn about studying with us through the eyes of past summer school students. 

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Looking for an alumni perspective? Read this interview with Grace Forrest, who attended the Pre-University Honours Programme: Politics & Identity in summer 2018.