Students
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PhD candidiate presents at IPSA's Regional Conference at Wroclaw University
The (IPSA)'s Regional Conference on the theme Resilience of Democracy in a Polarised World: Populism, Autocratization and Global Challenges was held in Wroc艂aw, Poland, from 14-16 October 2026, in collaboration with the Polish Political Science Association, the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Wroc艂aw and with the support of the Municipality of Wroc艂aw.
The three-day event brought together 372 scholars from 52 countries, who discussed a broad range of topics related to democracy, polarisation, and autocratisation. In total, over 300 papers were presented across 87 panels and three roundtables. Women accounted for 46% of the conference participants.
Ms Rosemarie Calleja is a third-year part-time PhD student carrying out her research on her theoretical framework, "The Spiral of Partisan Disillusionment, Institutionalised Media Parallelism, Affective Polarisation and the Dynamics of Partisan Disillusionment", on how strategic partisan news environments interact with voter identity to drive defensive political action rather than political withdrawal; within the Department of Policy, Politics and Governance at the Faculty of Economics, Management and Accountancy (FEMA). During the international conference, Ms Calleja presented her research paper, co-authored by Dr Mary Grace Vella (Faculty for Social Wellbeing) in the Panel: Young People, Democratic Disillusion and Disengagement.
Ms Calleja’s studies are supervised by Prof. Franco Curmi and Dr George Vital Zammit, both academics within FEMA and by advisor Prof. Karina Korostelina from George Mason University (USA).
