Annual Conference 2026 · Policy papers
POPULIST-GAMEMODE · Annual Conference
Policy papers
Conference outputs on populism, citizenship, education, and discourse monitoring across the European Union
The four policy papers below are produced as part of the POPULIST-GAMEMODE annual conference 2026. They translate the research, training, and dissemination activities of the conference into actionable recommendations addressed to European institutions, national policymakers, education stakeholders, and civil society organisations engaged in safeguarding democratic resilience and countering populist manipulation.
Available papers
Annual Conference 2026 · 28-30 May · Cluj-Napoca
An analytical paper examining populism as a thin-centred ideology – frequently difficult to identify in its incipient phases and capable of adapting to the overlapping crises that the European Union has been traversing in recent years.
Synthesises findings from the annual conference and Workshop 1 into a structured set of policy recommendations on countering populist manipulation across EU institutional, member-state, and civic levels.
Distils outcomes from Workshop 2 (counter-populist communication strategies) into recommendations for university curricula and faculty development.
A student-driven research platform tracking and fact-checking populist narratives about the European Union across member states.
Citing and sharing
Open access policy outputs
The policy papers published on this page are open-access outputs of the POPULIST-GAMEMODE Jean Monnet Module and may be freely cited, shared, and used in teaching, research, or policy work, provided appropriate attribution is given.
Suggested citation
Author(s) (2026), ‘Title of paper’, POPULIST-GAMEMODE Policy Papers, Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca.
The POPULIST-GAMEMODE Jean Monnet Module is co-funded by the European Union under Grant Agreement No. 101238497 (ERASMUS-JMO-2025-HEI-TCH-RSCH), implemented at the Department of International Studies and Contemporary History, Faculty of History and Philosophy, Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, between 2025 and 2028. Views and opinions expressed in the policy papers published on this page are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or EACEA.