About Us

The International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies (IRGAC) is an initiative of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung and University of Potsdam that brings together more than 20 scholar-activists from across the South to research authoritarian capitalism and far-right ideologies and movements, and develop strategic responses from the Left.

Onur Can Taştan

Associate Fellow

Onur Can Taştan is a researcher from Turkey working on labor movements and trade unionism. He received his Ph.D. in Labor Economics and Industrial Relations from Ankara University. His research with IRGAC aims to explore the dynamics of new labor activism against/under authoritarian neoliberalism through an analysis of the emergence of a recent strike wave in Turkey.

Claudia Cuellar

Post-Doc Fellow

Claudia Cuellar is a teacher and researcher born in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. With her current research, Claudia analyzes Santa Cruz' "development model" characterized by authoritarian socioeconomic structures blending colonial conservatism with neoliberal expansion of agro-industry in Bolivia.

Sara Cufré

Associate Fellow

Sara Cufré is a feminist researcher from Argentina. She holds a degree in Political Science and a PhD. in Social Sciences (Universidad de Buenos Aires)

Yasmeen Daher

Post-Doc Fellow

Yasmeen holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Montreal. Her current research examines how authoritarianism shapes political and moral subjectivities beyond mere repression. Focusing on Egypt and Palestine, she investigates how authoritarian regimes mobilize belonging, nationalism, and economic grievances.

Asel Doolotkeldieva

Post-Doc Fellow

Asel is a critical political scientist and political sociologist whose work sits at the intersection of political theory, sociology and political ethnography. Her current research project proposes to investigate a relational production of authoritarian neoliberal spaces in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

Inés Durán Matute

Associate Fellow

Inés is a researcher at the Centre for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology (Mexico) and an active companion of the struggle of native peoples in defence of their territory.

Hugo Fanton

Associate Fellow

Hugo Fanton is the State Coordinator of the Central de Movimentos Populares (Popular Movements Central) in São Paulo

Firoozeh Farvardin

Associate Fellow

Firoozeh Farvardin is a postdoc researcher/activist working on gender/sexual (counter) strategies of authoritarian neoliberalism at IRGAC hosted by the MERGE.

Mariano Féliz

Associate Fellow

Mariano Féliz is a social activist in Argentina. He is also a professor at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata and researcher at the CIG-IDIHCS.

Ali Yalçın Göymen

Post-Doc Fellow

Ali holds a PhD in Political Theory from Istanbul University. His current research investigates the Turkish regime's strategies for appropriating the commons and constructing false alternatives, producing subjectivities suited to a new model of accumulation: commons-based accumulation.

Nwet Kay Khine

Associate Fellow

Nwet Kay Khine, a former journalist and writer from Myanmar, is now a post doctoral research fellow at Passau University and affiliated to the Center for Social Development Studies of Chulalongkorn University

Melehat Kutun

Associate Fellow

Melehat Kutun is a Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung fellow at the International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies. She has written her habilitation project at Kassel University.

Paula Gil Larruscahim

Associate Fellow

Paula holds a PhD in Cultural and Global Criminology (DCGC) from universities of Kent (UK) and Utrecht (NL) and a M.A. degree in Criminal Sciences from the Pontific Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUC-RS)

Jürgen Mackert

Staff

Jürgen Mackert is Professor of Sociology at the University of Potsdam, Germany. He works in the fields of Social Closure, Settler Colonialism, Neo-liberalism, Democracy, Exclusion, Exploitation, New Slavery, and the methodology of sociology.

Kennedy Manduna

Associate Fellow

Kennedy Manduna is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow hosted by the Wits School of Governance (WSG) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Julieta Mira

Associate Fellow

Julieta Mira has devoted her academic career to studying and researching the central human rights issues of “ustice, memory, and truth.

Boaventura Monjane

Associate Fellow

Boaventura Monjane holds a PhD on Postcolonialisms and Global Citizenship (Sociology), from the CES/Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra.

Börries Nehe

Coordinator

Börries Nehe coordinates the International Research Group on Authoritarianism & Counter-Strategies at University of Potsdam, in cooperation with the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.

Fathima Nizaruddin

Associate Fellow

Fathima Nizaruddin is an academic and documentary filmmaker.

Paülah Nurit Shabel

Post-Doc Fellow

Paülah Nurit Shabel holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Buenos Aires University. Her research at IRGAC aims to study the knowledge that adolescents construct about money, informed by their everyday practices with it, and how that knowledge informs their political ideas, which today lean to the right.

Gustavo Robles

Associate Fellow

Gustavo Robles is an IRGAC Postdoc Fellow working on the subjective dimensions in the current phase of neoliberal governmentality.

Erol Saglam

Associate Fellow

Erol Saglam is a social anthropologist working on reconfigurations of statecraft, its relation to the law, and the changing parameters of political subjectivity.

Ailynn Torres Santana

Associate Fellow

Ailynn Torres Santana is an associated researcher at the International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies.

Fabian Schuppert

Staff

Fabian Schuppert is a political theorist and philosopher at the University of Potsdam, Germany. Fabian’s primary research interests lie in addressing issues of social injustice, structures of sexist and racist oppression, epistemic inequality, and colonial continuities in international responses to anthropogenic climate change.

Sagorika Singha

Associate Fellow

Sagorika is a Postdoctoral Fellow at The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi as well as an affiliate at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP), UNC, Chapel Hill

Ülker Sözen

Associate Fellow

Ülker Sözen received her PhD in Sociology from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Turkey in 2017.

Alexander Tushkin

Associate Fellow

Alexander Tushkin is a Russian antifascist journalist and visiting researcher at HWR Berlin

Pablo Uc

Post-Doc Fellow

Pablo Uc is a writer, academic, and activist of Mexican Mayan origin. His research with IRGAC focuses on the development of the ‘authoritarian appeal’ and the incidence of global externalization in militarized popular nationalism in Mexico and the authoritarian populism in El Salvador.