With the beginning of the year, the BMBF junior research group REXKLIMA (Right-wing extremism versus climate protection? Nationalist Opposition in a Transnational Political Field) starts at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism and the Institute of Political Science at the TU Dresden. The head of the research group is Dr. Manès Weisskircher. The BMBF junior research group is funded for five years and includes a post-doctoral position, three doctoral positions, and a visiting scholar program.

Right-wing populism and climate politics are two of the most relevant contemporary political phenomena, but they are usually treated separately in the social sciences. The junior research group links the two topics. In Europe, right-wing populist and far-right parties are increasingly mobilizing against climate policies, often denying the transnational problem of man-made climate change. However, the burgeoning literature on "climate skepticism" from the right emphasizes the limited state of knowledge on concrete substantive positioning in climate and energy policy, the mobilization strategies chosen, and their effects. The junior research group will contribute to filling these research gaps. Its guiding question is: How and why do right-wing populist and right-wing extremist parties mobilize on the issue of climate change? At the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism, the sub-project "Right-wing populist and right-wing extremist ecology: mobilization and effects" will be addressed. The Institute for Political Science is home to the sub-project "Right-wing populist and right-wing extremist ecology: programmatic and framing".

Dr. Manès Weisskircher was most recently employed at the University of Oslo, where he remains affiliated with the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX). He holds a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence.