Salomé letter

Profile

Salomé Ietter is a PhD Candidate at the School of Politics and International Relations, QMUL. Her doctoral thesis is titled  ‘Capitalising on Populism? The Anti-Populist Construction of ‘The People’ in the Framing of the Gilets Jaunes and Brexit Crises’ and is supervised by Dr. Stijn van Kessel and Dr. Lasse Thomassen. In her research, she focuses on the relation between anti-populism, populism and democracy. Taking a Laclauian perspective on populism as a contemporary and conjunctural form of emancipatory struggle, she argues that today’s threat to democracy resides in anti-populism rather than in populism itself, and observes a turn to authoritarianism, nationalism and radical neoliberalism in the respective responses of the French and British governments to the Gilets jaunes movement and to Brexit.

At Queen Mary, Salomé has also undertaken work as a research assistant, and is currently a research consultant on French politics for Freedom House. She is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Prior to joining QMUL, Salomé completed a BA in Political Science and English at the University Lyon II, and a MA in International Relations and Conflict Studies at the University of Kent at Brussels (Brussels School of International Studies). She also worked at the European Parliament in Brussels.

Teaching

POL110 Thinking Politically: concepts, theories and ideologies 

POL257 The International Politics of the Developing World 

POL380 Utopia & Dystopia: Political, Economic and Literary Dreamworlds

Research

Research Interests:

Salomé’s interdisciplinary background was driven by research interests in International Relations Theory, Conflict Studies, and Middle Eastern Politics.

With her doctoral thesis, her current research interests include: populism, anti-populism, democracy, discourse theory, crisis, social movements, French politics, and British politics.

Examples of research funding:

PhD Research Funded by Queen Mary University of London.

Public Engagement

Salomé was a Union representative from June 2020 to January 2021 for the QMUL Branch of the University and College Union (UCU), representing Postgraduate researchers’ rights and organising campaigns. She was also President of the Student Union at the Brussels School of International Studies (University of Kent) in 2016-2017, and chair of the School’s Annual International Conference.

From 2016 to 2018, she co-directed The European Platform for Middle East Dialogue, a Brussels-based NGO, organising events and encounters between Palestinians, Israelis and European law-makers.