All Posts

Conspiracy theories are no longer the preserve of the fringe. Increasingly they are taking root in comfortable, educated, professional households — the very people most of us assume to be immune. The third session in our lunchtime series, Resilience & Reconstruction: An Insightful Deep Dive, put that assumption to the test and asked why. Who is actually drawn to conspiracy thinking today, and what does the rise of the middle-class conspiracy theorist tell us about trust, unc

The story from inside a rally is rarely the story told outside it. In the second session of our lunchtime series, Resilience & Reconstruction: An Insightful Deep Dive, Steven Lacey and Dr Olha Mukha presented — for the first time in public — an independent, self-funded ethnographic study of the Unite the Kingdom march of 16 May, when tens of thousands gathered on Whitehall. The session was moderated by Thomas Brayford and sponsored by Peek Content. It was held under the Chath

On 20 May, linguist Kirstie Skates and cultural anthropologist Steven Lacey joined Dr Olha Mukha for the first session in our new lunchtime series — examining right-wing populism not as politics, but as a system of language and emotional appeal. The core argument was precise: what feels instinctive in populist communication is carefully structured. Codes, repetitions, and emotional cues work together to make particular ideas feel natural — and that sense of naturalness is whe

Resilience & Reconstruction: An Insightful Deep Dive brings together five sharp, research-led sessions on the forces reshaping democracy, disinformation, and the prospects for hope in the UK today. Running fortnightly on Wednesdays from 12:00–13:15 BST on Zoom, each session draws on fieldwork, lived experience, linguistic analysis, and cutting-edge research — distilled into focused, high-impact conversations with leading practitioners and thinkers. This isn't commentary but c