Seminar offered by Dondena Research Center (Fall 2026 seminar series) ----- October 19th 2026 12:45-2:00pm (UTC+1) ------ CIVICA ESR can attend ONLINE only. Zoom meetings link will be available upon registration. ------ SEMINAR DESCRIPTION: Commemorative practices shape collective understandings of legitimate authority, identity, and political violence, and governments routinely use them to impose majority narratives at the expense of minorities. We introduce the concept of commemorative exclusion—state commemoration that privileges the majority group's narrative while rendering minority experiences invisible—and argue that it provokes political backlash among minorities by heightening identity salience and perceptions of discrimination. We test this using Turkiye's practice of naming public schools after Turkish citizens killed in the ongoing conflict with Kurdish insurgents. Using a difference-in-differences design with granular administrative and electoral data, we show that school namings increase pro-Kurdish party support and turnout in the Kurdish region. ----- BIO: Gizem Arikan is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Trinity College Dublin. Her main fields of study are political psychology and political attitudes, with focus on religiosity, authoritarian values, democratic attitudes and attitudes towards immigration.
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