The Laboratory for the Study of Democracy (DemLab), founded in 2023, serves research and educational needs related to the study of democracy. In particular, its activities focus on the latter’s normative grounding, its historical development, its conceptual framing and its diachronic institutional mutations. This study encompasses fields such as political theory and philosophy (ancient, classical, modern and contemporary), discourse analysis and the critique of ideology, representation, populism and anti-populism, social theory, social movements and collective action, political communication, cultural studies and the political dimensions of artistic practices within the public sphere, including the relationship between politics and literature. Our central research orientation involves the recasting of contemporary political research in reflexive conceptual directions within rigorous theoretical and historical frameworks, employing methodological pluralism. The activities of the Laboratory (DemLab) aim at the cultivation of a critical political science able to capture and highlight the multi-level significance of the democratic phenomenon and to assess its current state, its present and its future.

Among other objectives, the Laboratory for the Study of Democracy (DemLab) will attempt to:

• Cover a series of research and teaching requirements pertaining to the School of Political Sciences and other units of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

• Support postgraduate, doctoral and post-doctoral research related to the study of democracy.

• Initiate and participate in concrete research projects with the use of qualitative, quantitative and any other plausible research method.

• Train diverse social scientists in its fields of specialization.

• Organize lectures, workshops, conferences, summer schools and other events and prepare publications as well as extend invitations to Greek and international experts to present and discuss their work in Thessaloniki.

Director: Professor Yannis Stavrakakis
Info: yanstavr@polsci.auth.gr