Dr Bernhard Forchtner

Senior Research Fellow

Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research
Schifferstraße 44
47059 Duisburg
Deutschland

Phone: +49 (0)203 379-5230
Fax: +49 (0)203 379-5276
E-Mail: forchtner@gcr21.org

Vita

Since 08/2019	University of Leicester School of Media, Communication and Sociology Associate Professor
01/2016 - 7/2019	University of Leicester School of Media, Communication and Sociology Lecturer
11/2013 - 10/2015	Humboldt-University of Berlin Marie Curie Fellow
10/2011 - 02/2013	Humboldt-University of Berlin Humboldt Center for Social and Political Research/ the Berlin Graduate School for Social Sciences Wilhelm von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow
10/2007 - 10/2007	Lancaster University Linguistics and English Language Doctoral student

Research Interests

Environmental communication/ politics
Far-right communication/ politics
Critical Discourse Studies, narrative and visual analysis

Fellowship

Dr Bernhard Forchtner joined the research group 'Global Cooperation and Diverse Conceptions of World Order' in February 2023 and will be a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre until December 2023.

Research Project at the Centre

Far-Right Environments: Multimodal Narratives and the (De)legitimation of Global Action, 1986-2018

This project proposes the a longitudinal study of far-right multimodal environmental communication to understand how global environmental issues have facilitated far-right world-making and ordering, starting with the Chernobyl disaster (1986). It adopts a narrative approach to written text and images – from photographs to art, cartoons, infographics and scientific figures – to analyse how far-right narrativization of such issues (e.g., nuclear, ozone, climate) has developed. Unveiling the evolution of narratives about global environmental crises is key to reconstructing underlying narrative identities. Indeed, the lack of historicity in work on far-right environmental communication of global issues prevents a thorough understanding of/ response to far-right identity politics and delegitimation of the ‘liberal script’ in world politics today.

Memberships

Political Ecology of the Far Right (PEFR) network
International Environmental Communication Association (IECA)
Institute for Environmental Futures (University of Leicester)

Publications

Bernhard Forchtner (ed.) (forthcoming, 2023). Visualising Far-Right Environments. Communication and the Politics of Nature, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Kristoffer Ekberg, Bernhard Forchtner, Martin Hultman, Kirsti M. Jylhä (2022). Climate Obstruction. How Denial, Delay and Inaction Are Heating the Planet, London: Routledge.
Bernhard Forchtner (ed.) (2021). Narrative in Critical Discourse Studies, Special Issue of Critical Discourse Studies.
Bernhard Forchtner and Özgür Özvatan (2022). De/legitimising EUrope through the performance of crises: The far-right Alternative for Germany on 'climate hysteria' and 'corona hysteria', Journal of Language and Politics, 21(2): 208 - 232
Bernhard Forchtner and Balša Lubarda (2022). Scepticisms and beyond? A comprehensive portrait of climate change communication by the far right in the European Parliament, Environmental Politics, doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2022.2048556.
Bernhard Forchtner, Marcos Engelken Jorge, and Klaus Eder (2020). Towards a revised theory of collective learning processes: argumentation, narrative and the making of the social bond, European Journal of Social Theory, 23(2): 200-218.
Bernhard Forchtner (ed.) (2019). The Far Right and the Environment: Politics, Discourse and Communication. Oxon: Routledge.
Bernhard Forchtner (2019). Climate change and the far right, WIREs Climate Change, 10(5): 1-11, doi.org/10.1002/wcc.604.
Bernhard Forchtner (2019). Nation, nature, purity: Extreme-right biodiversity in Germany, Patterns of Prejudice, 53(3): 285-301.
Ruth Wodak and Bernhard Forchtner (eds.) (2017). The Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics, Oxon: Routledge.
Bernhard Forchtner (2016). Lessons from the Past? Memory, Narrativity and Subjectivity, Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Bernhard Forchtner and Christoffer Kølvraa (2015). The nature of nationalism: populist radical right parties on countryside and climate, Nature & Culture, 10(2): 199–224.