The Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in Political Thought and Conceptual Change (CoE PolCon, 2006–2011, new funding period has been being applied for) cooperates with two projects on parliamentary history funded by the Academy of Finland and carried out at the University of Jyväskylä.

The guiding principle of the Centre of Excellence in Political Thought and Conceptual Change is thinking, reading and analyzing phenomena politically. The concept of contingent activity and the contested, controversial and historical character of concepts serve as the heuristic core of the studies conducted within the Centre, which provides an organizational framework, a locus of intellectual encounters and discussions as well as an administrative basis for its members and the research teams. The comparative conceptual history of parliaments has become one of the major research themes of the Centre during the current funding period, and further projects are being planned. For more information, see the Centre homepage at http://www.coepolcon.fi/

The current projects on parliamentary history at the University of Jyväskylä include:

(i) Parliamentary Means of Conflict Resolution in Twentieth-Century Britain , led by Professor Pasi Ihalainen at the Department of History and Ethnology, the Faculty of Humanities, and funded by the Academy of Finland in 2010–2013. For more information, see the project homepage at http://research.jyu.fi/parliamentary_means/

(ii) The Politics of Dissensus: Parliamentarism, Rhetoric and Conceptual History , led my Academy Professor Kari Palonen at the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, the Faculty of Social Sciences, and funded by the Academy of Finland in 2008–2012. For more information, see the project homepage at https://www.jyu.fi/ytk/laitokset/yfi/en/research/projects/dissensus

(iii) An anthology on Parliament as a Political Concept for the planned new European Conceptual History Series. The anthology will be edited by Cornelia Ilie (Malmö), Pasi Ihalainen and Kari Palonen. The first workshop surrounding this project are scheduled for late 2010.

Recent publications include:

Ihalainen, Pasi & Kari Palonen, “Parliamentary sources in the comparative study of conceptual history: methodological aspects and illustrations of a research proposal”. Parliaments, Estates & Representation , Vol. 29, 2009, pp. 17­–34.

Ihalainen, Pasi, Agents of the People: Democracy and Popular Sovereignty in British and Swedish Parliamentary and Public Debates, 1734–1800 . Brill: Leiden & Boston 2010.

Palonen, Kari, The Politics of Limited Times: The Rhetoric of Temporal Judgment in Parliamentary Democracies . Nomos: Baden-Baden 2008.