The CHACE project, in collaboration with the Institute for Social Research and the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX), recently gathered a fine group of researchers and stakeholders in Oslo for a 2-day workshop on “New Directions in Antisemitism Research”.

The 21st century resurgence of antisemitism has generated new scholarly attention to a very old phenomenon. While traditional antisemitism research has been heavy on history and the humanities, today’s emerging scholarship is multifarious, involving various social science and humanities disciplines, employing quantitative and computational approaches alongside qualitative and contextual ones.

The purpose of this workshop was to take stock: What have we learned? What are the major blank spots? And where do we go from here? The workshop gathered a multidisciplinary group of established and emerging scholars of contemporary antisemitism as well as Jewish community stakeholders to discuss the status of knowledge, reflect on aspects that remain poorly understood, and suggest ways ahead in forging a research agenda for the future. View the full program and participant bios here.

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Workshop participants in the Vigeland Sculpture Park

Over two days, we successfully worked through seven sessions, discussing, among other things:

  • empirical and methodological advances in studying online antisemitism
  • how to measure and explain variation in Jews’ exposure to antisemitism
  • what to make of antizionist, right-wing, and Muslim antisemitism
  • how best to tap into people’s attitudes about Jews and get around the hurdle of social desirability bias using survey experiments and other techniques
  • the crucial and surprisingly complicated question of whether antisemitism is in fact increasing

Stakeholders from the Jewish Community of Oslo and the European Jewish Congress’ Security and Crisis Center joined us for the entire workshop, ensuring the transfer of knowledge and perspectives between the field of academic research and the Jewish community.

All in all, I am pleased to report that this workshop was a highly successful milestone event for the CHACE project, in which seeds of multiple future research collaborations were sown.