Andrea Klinger

Andrea Klinger

Andrea Klinger studied German-French Studies, a binational bachelor program of the German-French University, at the Universities of Regensburg and Nice. After completing her Master’s degree in Intercultural European Studies at the University of Regensburg, she taught German for one year at the renowned Grande École École normale supérieure de Lyon (ENS de Lyon) and worked at the University of Trier as a research project assistant in the field of transnational European education. Her research interests primarily focus on French political culture, democracy studies as well as European integration.

 

Project: Politics, Language, and Emotions: French Democracy Between Governmental Crisis, Affective Polarization, and the Appeal of Sentimentality

Andrea’s research project examines the use of sentimental codes in political discourse in France, analyzing and contextualizing their forms and functions against the background of political polarization and the narrowing of the political center in the country. Her research project aims to contribute to the current state of research on the erosion of liberal democracy and, with its focus on the political language of influential political actors, offers an in-depth discourse-analytical investigation of different sentimentally coded affirmative strategies, understood as possible explanatory factors for the strengthening of the political fringes and the phenomenon of affective polarization in France. The project hence aims to identify and examine sentimentally coded stimuli in political rhetoric by also focusing on affectively charged founding myths, ideologically underpinned narratives of national and collective identities as well as cultural heritage. It aims to assess the impact of such (re-)constructions and (re-)contextualizations of national and collective memory practices, especially with regard to their mobilizing function when activating emotional knowledge.

 

Podcast Episodes & Science Communication

  • 05/2025: „Gefühle und Polarisierung in der französischen Politik“, I Am Scientist, hosted by Daniel Hölle, Philipp Hubert, and Lisa Schmors.
  • 04/2024: „The Sentimental from a Sociological Perspective“, Thoughts on Feelings, hosted by the DFG-funded Research Training Group „The Sentimental in Literature, Culture and Politics“, FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg (guest: Dr. Larissa Pfaller).
  • 11/2022: „Kritische Europabildung in der Forschung und im Unterricht“, hosted by the BMBF-funded research project „Edu.GR – Europalernen in transnationalen Bildungsräumen“, University of Trier (guests: Prof. Dr. Andreas Eis, and Dr. Claire Moulin-Doos).

 

Talks & Posters

  • 12/2025: „Sentimental Populism in France’s Presidential Campaigns (2017 & 2022): Affective Polarization and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy in the Anthropocene“, at the international conference Social Contracts and Democracy in Times of the Anthropocene – Thinking Beyond Crisis, Fulda University of Applied Sciences.
  • 09/2023: „Affective Polarization and the Crisis of Democracy in France: Sentimentality, Memories of the Past, and the Populist Right During the 2022 Elections“, at the conference Sentimental State(s): Sentimental Politics of Order and Belonging, DFG-funded Research Training Group „The Sentimental in Literature, Culture and Politics“, FAU Erlangen–Nuremberg.
  • 09/2023: „‘Us against Them’ in the Name of the French Nation: Discursive Practices of Affective Polarization during the 2017 and 2022 Election Campaigns and the Temptation of Sentimentality as a Challenge to Liberal Democracy“, at the conference Sentimental State(s): Sentimental Politics of Order and Belonging, DFG-funded Research Training Group „The Sentimental in Literature, Culture and Politics“, FAU Erlangen–Nuremberg. (Poster)

 

Publications

  • Klinger, Andrea. 2022. Transnationale Schulkooperationen als interkulturelle Lerngelegenheit. In mateneen – Praxishefte Demokratische Schulkultur, Schule öffnen und vernetzen (Issue 7), pp. 25 –27.
  • Hansen, Klaus P., and Klinger, Andrea. 2020. Interview mit Klaus P. Hansen: Über Kollektive, Pauschalurteile und Stereotype. École normale supérieure (ENS) de Lyon, La clé des langues. http://cle.ens-lyon.fr/allemand/civilisation/civilisation/interview-mit-klaus-p-hansen-uber-kollektiv-pauschalurteile-und-stereotype.

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