Transforming Identities brought together scholars, activists, artists and authors to discuss current challenges to democratic participation and shifting understandings of diversity, minorities, and solidarity. At a time when minorities, broadly defined, are increasingly positioned as threats to majority rights and democratic values, the project explore how and to what ends minority mobilization challenges Nordic social and political landscapes – what’s at stake, why, and for whom?

In three workshops (in Stavanger, Gothenburg and Helsinki) the project explored the impulses for new understandings of equality and rights, solidarity, marginalization and democracy, in the context of the rise of rightwing activism, growing nationalism, local and global insecurities. The project aimed to facilitate collaborations and thinking across disciplines and platforms, expand understandings of how democratic participation transforms the social and the political, and to establish lasting avenues for debate, insights, and new research.