Summer School Political Conspiracism and Anti-Semitism

Course description

The summer school will provide an introductory overview, through lectures offered by worldclass experts, on strategies to analyze, decode, and debunk some of the forms of political use of denialism and conspiracy theories with a focus on antisemitism.
An interdisciplinary perspective will be adopted, including political theory, political philosophy, history, and political science, in order to offer a wide-ranging analysis of the phenomena being considered.

Course target

The summer school is open to anyone interested in the topic, from undergraduate students, PhD students and post doc to journalists and policymakers. In selecting applications, however, preference will be given to doctoral students and post doc, particularly from the area of political science. 

Training objectives

The training objectives are to offer analytical tools that will first and foremost enable the interpretation and decoding of the processes by which denialism and conspiracy theories are used in political terms in order to gain consensus. 

Course programme

The Course syllabus has a duration of 5 days, from June 23rd to June 27th 2025.

• Monday, June 23: 2 p.m. – 6 p.m.: Political Conspiracism: The Case of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” - Prof. Marco Solinas (SSSA)
• Tuesday, June 24: 9 a.m. – 1 p.m.: Conspiracy Theories in Italy: between History, Politics, Sociology, and Social Psychology - Prof. Moreno Mancosu (University of Turin)
• Tuesday, June 24: 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.: Hate Speech in Comparative Constitutonal Law - Prof. Giuseppe Martinico (SSSA)
• Wednesday, June 25 9 a.m. – 1 p.m.: Conspiracy Thinking and Antisemitism: The European History - Prof. Uffa Jensen (University of Berlin)
• Wednesday, June 25 2 p.m. – 4 p. m.: Conspiracy Thinking and Antisemitism: Contemporary Forms and Examples in EU - Prof. Uffa Jensen (University of Berlin)
• Wednesday, June 25: 4 p.m. – 6 p.m.: Post-Public Sphere and Antisemitism Online - Prof. Claudia Hassan (University of Rome)
• Thursday, June 26: 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.: Conspiracy Theories: How Gender, Geographical Differences, and Social Media Use Influence Conspiratorial Thinking - Dr. Giuliana Sorci (University of Siena)
• Thursday, June 26: 2 p.m. – 6 p.m.: Reality at Risk: when Conspiracy Theory Becomes Documentary - Prof. Anna Maria Lorusso (University of Bologna)
• Friday, June 27: 9 a.m. – 1 p.m.: War Against the Jews. Antisemitic Conspirationalism in Nazi and Neonazi Ideology - Prof. Marcus Funck (University of Berlin)
• Friday, June 27: 2 p.m. – 6 p.m.: The Dynamics of American Conspiracy Theories - Prof. Joseph Uscinski (University of Miami)

Speakers profile

Marcus Funck
Marcus Funck is an Assistant Professor at Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) at Technische Universität Berlin, where he serves as the graduate program director in the master program "Interdisciplinary Antisemitism Studies". His research interests include a wide range of topics in modern German, European and transatlantic history (19th and 20th cent.). Currently he is focusing on populist movements in the Western world, German conceptions of “Volk” and “identity”, and, by contrast, the history and political philosophy of multiculturalism.
Claudia Hassan
Claudia Hassan is an Associate Professor of Sociology of Culture at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. She is the director of the Master on Holocaust and Memory Studies. Among her publications: Disinformazione e Democrazia. Populismo, Rete e regolazione (Marsilio, 2022). Her areas of research include: the sociology of memory, conspiracy theories, and the relationship between the network and democracy.
Uffa Jensen 
Uffa Jensen is a historian at the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technische Universität in Berlin and its deputy director. His research interests are the history of antisemitism, of German Jewry, of psychoanalysis, of the history of emotions as well as visual history. He has previously worked at the University of Sussex, the Universität Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. His most recent publications include “Zornpolitik“ (2017), “Wie die Couch nach Kalkutta kam: Eine Globalgeschichte der frühen Psychoanalyse“ (2019) and “Ein antisemitischer Doppelmord“ (2022).
Anna Maria Lorusso 
Anna Maria Lorusso is a Full Professor in the Department of Arts of Bologna University, where she teaches Semiotics. Her research is focused on the Semiotics of culture, with two main fields of research: logic of information (post-truth, fake news, conspiracies etc..) and cultural memory. Among her last publications: Post-verità. Fra reality tv, social media e storytelling (Laterza, 2018); Dalla Storia alla Memoria. Il discorso storico nei media all’epoca della postverità (Mimesis, 2025); she edited Perspectives on Post-Truth (Routledge, 2024).
Moreno Mancosu 
Moreno Mancosu is an Associate Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Turin. His research focuses on public opinion, political communication, and the spread of conspiracy theories. He has published extensively in international journals and has been involved in research projects on electoral behavior, political beliefs, and misinformation. Currently, he is engaged in studies examining the intersections between misinformation, politics, and social dynamics, with a particular focus on the Italian context.
Giuseppe Martinico
Giuseppe Martinico is a Full Professor of Comparative Public law at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa.Prior to joining the Scuola Sant’Anna, he was García Pelayo Fellow at the Centro de Estudios Politicos y Constitucionales (CEPC), Madrid and Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence. He is author of “The Tangled Complexity of the EU Constitutional Process. The Frustrating Knot of Europe” (2022) and “Filtering Populist Claims to Fight Populism. The Italian Case in a Comparative Perspective” (2021).
Marco Solinas 
Marco Solinas is an Associate Professor in Political Philosophy at Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies and Project Manager of Jean Monnet Module “Debunking Political Uses of Denialisms and Conspiracy Theories in EU” (GOLDSTEIN). His research focuses on critical theory of society, populism and conspiracy theories. He has published extensively in national and international journals.
Giuliana Sorci 
Giuliana Sorci is a Research Fellow at the University of Siena. From 2021 to 2024, she was a Research Fellow at the Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa and Florence) where she worked on the Valcon and PopSphere projects. From 2016 to 2019, Sorci was a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Catania. In 2015, she published the book Social Networks: New Systems of Surveillance and Social Control, which analyzed how surveillance and social control practices are implemented on commercial platforms.
Joseph Uscinski
Joseph Uscinski is Professor of Political Science at University of Miami where he studies public opinion and political behavior, with a focus on conspiracy theories. He is coauthor of American Conspiracy Theories (Oxford, 2014) and Conspiracy Theories: A Primer (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023, currently available in Italian), and editor of Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them (Oxford, 2018). He has also published more than 60 scholarly articles and frequently appears in the American and international news.

Attendance certification

At the end of the Course the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies will issue a certificate of attendance with value to the extent permitted by law, and with the details of the ECTS obtained to the students who attended at least 80% of the lessons, and passed the assessment tests foreseen and are up-to-date with the payment of the enrolment fee.