SEN Journal: Online Exclusives would like to present the following interview with Dr. Daniele Conversi, the Ikerbasque Foundation Research Professor at the Universidad del País Vasco (Prosoparlam). He was a panel speaker at the 2012 ASEN Conference.
Vesselina Ratchev and Karen Seegobin interviewed Dr. Conversi at the 2012 ASEN Conference, held at the London School of Economics and Political Science on 27-29 March, 2012.
1. What are the main themes you’ve been working on this year?
I have been working on modernism in relation to nationalism, i.e. whether modernism can be considered as the dominant ideology of modernity and whether it is an ideology at all and how it reads with nationalism. Moreover, as my main project, I am looking at less popular concepts such as that of cultural homogenisation and how states have used cultural nationalism to impose common cultural values from the French Revolution until 1914 (or maybe later). I wouldn’t touch the inter-war period too much but might look a little bit into it, then ask how this cultural homogenisation interacts with globalisation in the neo-liberal world, of course using my own definition of globalisation.