Guest: Alison McQueen, Associate Professor of Political Science at Stanford University Time: 16:00–18:00 (Stockholm time) 9 October 2023 Zoom link: https://lu-se.zoom.us/j/65667016322

For the first webinar of the research program At the End of the World, we are happy to host the prominent political scientist Alison McQueen, who will discuss the political nature of apocalypticism with the jurist Tormod Otter Johansen and the program’s PI, Jayne Svenungsson. A key assumption of our joint research is that apocalypticism per se is neither destructive nor emancipatory. Yet history knows numerous examples of apocalyptic visions that have ended in disaster, even as other apocalyptic visions in other context have served to bolster resistance against oppressive social orders. What can we learn from these different historical examples? And what are the dangers and potentials of apocalyptic imaginaries in a contemporary political perspective?

Alison McQueen is Associate Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and the author of Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Tormod Otter Johansen is a researcher in Public Law at the University of Gothenburg. He works on in constitutional and administrative law, legal theory, and political theology.

Jayne Svenungsson is Professor of Systematic Theology at Lund University and the author of Divining History: Prophetism, Messianism and the Development of the Spirit (Berghahn Books, 2016).