IRES researcher Sofie Bedford participated in the IPSA Regional Conference in Wroclaw

14-16 October Sofie Bedford participated in the International Political Science Association (IPSA) Regional Conference at the University of Wrocław in Poland, convened in cooperation with the Polish Political Science Association (PPSA), and the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Wrocław. The conference brought together scholars and delegates from over 50 countries across more than 80 academic panels under th overrarching theme: "Resilience of Democracy in a Polarized World: Populism, Autocratization, and Global Challenges”. The keynote speaker was Manuela Caiani, an Associate Professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore. She delivered her address during the opening ceremony on October 14, 2026, on the topic: "Dynamics of Far-Right Transnationalization in Europe". Her speech drew from her research with the Neo-authoritarianisms in Europe and the Liberal Democratic Response (AUTHLIB) project, focusing on how illiberal actors and ideas cross international borders.

Together with two of her co-authors (Tatsiana Chulitskaya and Eleanor Bindman) Sofie Bedford took part in a informal ”pre-launch” of their book Bottom-up mobilisation in consolidated autocracy: individual and collective voices of the 2020 Belarusian protests that will be published by Palgrave Macmillan next year. It was the very last panel of the conference (on a Friday afternoon) so there was only a small audience. But the presentation still generated great discussion and many new insights. The third co-author of the book Alesia Rudnik unfortunately could not attend.