POLIFA
POLIFA is an international research and advocacy organization focused on political imagination, freedom and democracy.
The goal of POLIFA is to visibilize novel ideas and activities that receive less attention.
We organize events, share articles and produce collaborative projects.
Topics
Freedom
We are interested in novel ideas of collective or shared freedom that could enable us to think and act in relation to our immediate present and future. This places our focus to understand freedom as joint political action.
Democracy
Democracy and politics are under siege globally. This is visible in current trends of narrowing civil society, homogenization of knowledge and thought, depoliticization of imagination, as well as identity and post-truth politics.
political imagination
In western political studies, imagination can be seen as an individual or joint capacity, or societies themselves being imaginary, or the very foundation of politics and societies being imaginal without being tied to assumptions of specific realities.
Articles
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Youth paving the way for politicization in Kenya and beyond
New generation of ideological politics has emerged in Kenya. Is this a turning point for the democratization of Kenyan politics?
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the idea of a borderless world
The capacity to decide who can move, who can settle, where and under what conditions is increasingly becoming the core of political struggles over…
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Governing In The Planetary Age
To overcome the twin crises of legitimacy and effectiveness created by planetary challenges, nation-states must delegate governance responsibilities up to planetary institutions and down…
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Democratic phantasies: Political imagination and the Athenian democracy
This dissertation explores the role of imagination in the ancient Athenian democracy and classical political thought. I argue that the imagination has several political…
Eeva
mäkinen
My name is Eeva Mäkinen. My background is in international relations and development inLatin America, Europe andEast Africa. I’m currently a PhD researcher inpolitical studies at the University of Lapland where I research postcolonial political imagination and democracy.
Our aim with POLIFA is to create a space where actors working with these topics can assemble together, advocate and share research on political imagination, democracy and freedom. I’m interested in global political phenomena that takes different forms in local contexts.
The name POLIFA is inspired by Greek roots of polis (city-state) and phantasma (image, phantom) – combining political imagination.
POLIFA 