EKM Teaduskirjastus

CELSA Conference "Humour and Conflict in the Public Sphere"

September 4–6, 2024, Estonian Literary Museum, Tartu, Estonia

Koostaja: Anastasiya Fiadotava, Guillem Castañar, Liisi Laineste

ISBN: 978-9916-742-09-9

Ilmumisaeg: 2024

In today’s media-saturated European societies, humour often takes centre stage in social conflicts. This conference deals with the question of humour and conflict, and is the final outcome of the CELSA project “Humour and Conflict in the Public Sphere: Communication styles, humour controversies and contested freedoms in contemporary Europe”. In this project, we conducted a comparative study on the matter, bringing together a multidisciplinary team from three top universities from Poland, Belgium, and Estonia. The aims of our study were twofold: first, how humorous communication expresses protest, persuasion, cohesion or aversion; and second, how and when humorous communication is met with indignation or retaliation.
The data that we collected covered seven languages in four countries: Belarus, Belgium, Estonia and Poland. The huge open access database covers various kinds of data: humour (memes, humorous banners, cartoons, etc.) related to specific societal conflicts, and reactions to humour (comments, more memes) and helps systematically map the role that humorous expression plays in conflicts.
These two years have been busy for the members of the project and have flown past unbelievably fast. In the course of these two years, we have prepared, submitted and published numerous articles, many of which you will hear about at this conference. We have also secured further cooperation projects, most remarcably a EU-funded MCSA project lead by prof Władysław Chłopicki. It will bring together scholars from a range of European nations into a larger consortium. Active in 2025-2028, the project “HUMLIT: Developing humour literacy: analysing production, content and reception of humour to bring positive change in the public sphere” will result in a comprehensive description of the form, content and context of (mostly online) humour and its reactions.
This conference is the grand finale of the CELSA network project. We are looking forward to sharing our findings and getting feedback and insights from humour scholars and practitioners interested in similar topics. The conference will be a platform to develop collaborations and think of new ways to discuss the importance of humour at the time of crisis. Tartu, in addition to being the home for one of European top Universities, is this year the European capital of culture. In the coming three days, we invite you to enjoy what this town has to offer and hope that you will be impressed enough to return many times in the future.

CELSA project leaders Giselinde Kuipers, Liisi Laineste and Władysław Chłopicki
Conference organisers: Liisi Laineste, Anastasiya Fiadotava, Guillem Castañar

Conference website: https://www.kirmus.ee/et/sundmuste-kalender/konverents-humour-and-conflict-public-sphere