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ArgumentPopulism is&#160; a category which is often abused in public discourse nowadays. For this reason, it is a category historians will have to face more and more frequently.&#160;In spite of this, it is undeniable that the issue is usually looked at from the perspective of&#160; political&#160; science or cultural studies, clearly dominated by a need for conceptualization and abstraction of the category.&#160;As some scholars have pointed out, the clear difficulty in reaching a unique and unitary definition of the phenomenon shows how indefinite its outline is and how problematic it is to ascribe different experiences to a single ideal-type.This limit is clearly reflected in the difficulty of historical disciplines to thematize the phenomenon. Nonetheless, the study of historical cases is a necessary preliminary task. This also demonstrates the importance of creating a link between the reflections of political scientists, sociologists and philosophers and those of&#160; historians. Furthermore, it also shows the need to set up a critical debate on how historical disciplines can contribute to a better understanding of this category.A conference on the subject will be organized in Florence (Italy) on April, 8-9-10, 2014, under the sponsorship of the Italian Society for the Study of Contemporary History (SISSCo).The conference aims to discuss - through a survey deployed on a large temporal and spatial horizon -&#160; how different features of the populist phenomenon (privileged relationship between leadership and masses, criticism of the established order, anti-political nature, strongly nationalistic orientation and recovery of a mythic vision of the mother country, etc.) transform in correspondence to national and international historical developments.The conference intends thus to examine the phenomenon of populism in a historical perspective with the following aims:To open a channel of dialogue and discussion among historians and political scientists, in order to launch a debate on the declination of the populist phenomenon and identify some assumptions&#160; concerning the methodological differences that both disciplines find when analysing the phenomenonTo analyse the first populist or "proto-populist" experiences that took place in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.To deal with experiences on the European and international scene in the inter-war years. On this case, it will be essential to examine and debate on the populist (or not) nature of the authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.To study "populist" experiences after WW2Submission guidelinesPlease, send an abstract (max 300 words) and a biosketch (max 100 words) to seminari_populismi@libero.itby 15 June&#160; 2013.Scientific committeeFulvio Conti,Marco De Nicol&#242;,Marco Pignotti,Maurizio Ridolfi,Chiara Chini,Sheyla Moroni,Pier Luigi Ballini,Giorgia Bulli,Chiara Chini,Fulvio Conti,Marco De Nicol&#242;,Sheyla Moroni,Marco Pignotti,Maurizio Ridolfi,Sorina Soare,Marco Tarchi,Barbara Taverni,Marcello Verga.