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Cosmos

The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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COSMOS Talks

The COSMOS Talks are public discussions on cutting edge contentious politics research from across various theoretical, methodological and disciplinary traditions. They aim to provide feedback on preliminary results of current research projects, future research projects proposals and drafts of forthcoming papers, articles and book chapters. The COSMOS Talks also aim at improving synergies and networking among researchers from the COSMOS community as well as from other universities.

We ask presenters to send a paper (of no more than 30 pages) to the organizers, no later than a week before the scheduled talk. Each session lasts for two hours. Paper givers are given maximum 20 minutes to introduce their works. Preselected discussants are given about 10 minutes each to give constructive feedback. The floor will then be open to the public. All participants are asked to read the paper in advance.

Understanding Insurgency. Popular Support for the PKK in Turkey, Francis O’Connor, Wageningen University

Date: 20/10/2021

Place: 14.30-16:00 (CET), Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore, Palazzo Strozzi (5th Floor), Piazza degli Strozzi, Firenze

Category: COSMOS Talk

Abstract:

 

The Neoliberal Republic: Corporate Lawyers, Statecraft and the Making of Public-Private France, Antoine Vauchez, Université Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne

Date: 18/06/2021

Place: 15.00-16:30 (CET), Online Talk, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences

Category: COSMOS Talk

Abstract:

 

For the love of humanity: The World Tribunal on Iraq, AYÇA ÇUBUKÇU, London School of Economics and Political Science

Date: 14/05/2021

Place: 15:00-16:30 (CET), Online Cosmos Talk, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore

Category: COSMOS Talk

Abstract:

 

The micro-politics of corporate responsibility: How companies shape protest in mining communities, Paul Haslam, Ottawa University

Date: 23/04/2021

Place: 15:00-16:30 (CET), Online Talk, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore

Category: COSMOS Talk

Abstract:

 

A Bigger Box: Studying Social Movements as Civic Action, Paul Lichtermann, University of Southern California

Date: 12/03/2021

Place: 17.00-18:30, Online Talk, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore

Category: COSMOS Talk

Abstract:

 

Presentation of #Hashtag Activism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice, Brooke Foucault Wells, Northeastern University

Date: 05/03/2021

Place: 16.00-17.30 (CET), Online Talk, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore

Category: COSMOS Talk

Abstract:

 

Rethinking lay expertise: from AIDS activism to the era of Covid-19, Steven Epstein, Northwestern University

Date: 19/02/2021

Place: 16:00-17:30 (CET), Online Talk, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore.

Category: COSMOS Talk

Abstract:

 

Rethinking lay expertise: From AIDS activism to the era of Covid-19, Steven Epstein, Northwestern University

Date: 03/12/2020

Place: 16:00-18:00 CET, Online Talk. Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore.

Category: COSMOS Talk

Abstract:

 

Presentation of the third edition of Social Movements: An Introduction

Date: 25/11/2020

Place: 11-13:00 (CET). Online Talk. Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore

Category: COSMOS Talk

Abstract:

 

Transnational LGBTI Movements in Europe: Rights and Backlash in the 21st Century, Philip Ayoub (Occidental College)

Date: 24/11/2020

Place: 17 - 19 (CET), Online Talk. Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore.

Category: COSMOS Talk

Abstract:

 

Friendship as a Political Concept: Kurdish Youth Politics in the 1990s, Delal Aydin, SAR research fellow at SNS/COSMOS

Date: 17/06/2020

Place: 2:30-3:30 PM, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore. Online Talk.

Category: COSMOS Talk

Abstract:

 

Citizen-Initiated Mechanisms of Direct Democracy: A Way to Minimize the Risks of Social Explosions? – David Altman, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Date: 19/02/2020

Place: 4:00-5:30 PM, Department of Political and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore, Palazzo Strozzi (5th Floor), Piazza Strozzi, 50123 Firenze

Category: COSMOS Talk

Abstract:

 

Right, Click, Remove – Donatella Della Ratta, John Cabot University

Date: 04/02/2020

Place: 2:30-4:30 PM, Department of Political and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore, Palazzo Strozzi (5th Floor), Piazza Strozzi, 50123 Firenze

Category: COSMOS Talk

Abstract:

 

Democracy and the Public Sphere – Hans Jorg Trenz, University of Copenhagen

Date: 04/12/2019

Place: 10 AM-1 PM, Aula Simone del Pollauiolo, Palazzo Strozzi (5th Floor), Piazza Strozzi, Firenze

Category: COSMOS Talk

Abstract:

 

Biographical experiences and place attachments in environmental contents : the example of anti-wind turbines activists in Southern France – Stephanie Dechezell, Science Po, Aix en Provence

Date: 04/11/2019

Place: 2:00-4:00 PM, Department of Political and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore, Palazzo Strozzi (5th Floor), Piazza Strozzi, 50123 Firenze

Category: COSMOS Talk

Abstract:

 

News

16/07/2021

Prof. della Porta to lead VolkswagenStiftung-funded ECSEuro project
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Reflecting the European challenge of transnational cooperation and multiple crises, this project asks how local political initiatives across Europe enact citizenship and solidarity and contribute to the vision of a more democratic Europe from below.

09/07/2021

SNS announces 7 fully-funded PhD positions
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The Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore announces 7 fully-funded PhD positions. Deadline for applications: 21 August 2021.

28/09/2020

Four post-doctoral research positions on the pandemic
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The Scuola Normale Superiore announces four post-doctoral positions to be activated as part of the research project “After the coronavirus pandemic: The effects of the health emergency on society and knowledge.” 

26/02/2020

CFP Athens conference "Capitalism, Democracy, Contention: A Decade of Crisis" 13-15 May 2020
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Aspiring to shed light on the Greek experience in the era of crisis in a comparative, inter-disciplinary perspective, the Laboratory on Contentious Politics (Department of Political Science and History, Panteion University, Athens), the Centre on Social Movement Studies (Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence) and the Hellenic Political Science Association are organizing an international conference to be held at Panteion University, on 13, 14 and 15 May 2020.

12/12/2019

Prof. Donatella Della Porta to Be Awarded Honorary PhD
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On Friday 13, 2019, the University of the Peloponnese (PSIR) will award an honorary doctorate to Professor Donatella Della Porta, Dean of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore.

22/07/2019

Protest for a future: international report on #FridaysForFuture and the climate strike
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Composition, mobilization and motives of the participants in Fridays For Future climate protests on 15 March 2019, in 13 European cities. A multi-country collaboration report, with contributions from COSMOS researchers Lorenzo Zamponi, Donatella della Porta, Martín Portos, Niccolò Bertuzzi and Daniela Chironi.

Publications

Edited Volume - 2021

Varieties of Populism in Europe in Times of Crises
Manuela Caiani & Paolo Graziano
Populism is booming across all the nuances of the political spectrum. It occupies relevant positions in national parliaments, in governmental coalitions with mainstream parties or as successful challengers of the political status quo. This volume sheds new light on the topic from different methodological and theoretical angles and offers evidence from a variety of cases on the ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions on populism’s emergence and consolidation in Europe over the past 30 years.

Journal Article - 2021

European populism before the pandemic: ideology, Euroscepticism, electoral performance, and government participation of 63 parties in 30 countries
Paul Taggart & Andrea Pirro
This contribution is conceived as a resource on the state of European populist parties before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. It reports on cross-national comparative findings generated by data collected from 30 European countries as to the state of populist parties in one calendar year (2019) and provides an extensive qualitative overview of the national cases.

Journal Article - 2021

Forging, bending, and breaking: Enacting the “illiberal playbook” in Hungary and Poland
Andrea Pirro & Ben Stanley
We first argue that illiberal changes are ideologically founded and identify how both populism and nativism figure in the policymaking of illiberals in power. We then show how these practices emerge from a common “illiberal playbook”—a paradigm of policy change comprising forms of forging, bending, and breaking—and elaborate on the notion that illiberal governments are using legalism to kill liberalism.

Edited Volume - 2021

Contentious Migrant Solidarity. Shrinking Spaces and Civil Society Contestation
Donatella della Porta & Elias Steinhilper
Building upon social movement and migration studies, this book maps the two sides of ‘contentious solidarity’: a shrinking civic space and its contestation by civil society.

Journal Article - 2021

Learning from Democratic Practices: New Perspectives in Institutional Design
Andrea Felicetti
Drawing from literature on democratic practices in social movements and democratic innovations, the article illustrates three ways to advance institutional design in the wake of the systemic turn.

Journal Article - 2021

Populism between voting and non-electoral participation
Andrea Pirro & Martín Portos
The article focuses on a neglected aspect of populist mobilisation, i.e. non-electoral participation (NEP), and elaborates on the extent to which populist party voters engage politically outside the polling station. While challenging common understandings of populism as inherently distrustful and apathetic, and protest as an exclusive practice of the left, the study critically places NEP at the heart of populism in general, and populist right politics in particular.

Monograph - 2021

Migrant Protest. Interactive Dynamics in Precarious Mobilizations
Elias Steinhilper
This book explores the interactions and spaces shaping the emergence, trajectory, and fragmentation of migrant protest in unfavorable contexts of marginalization.

Journal Article - 2020

We protect the forest beings, and the forest beings protect us: Cultural resistance in the Ecuadorian Amazonia
Leonidas Oikonomakis
The inhabitants of Sarayaku have forged an anti-colonial, anti-extractivist, and anti-capitalist resistance culture. How did that culture develop? How is it articulated? Moreover, how is kawsak sacha positioned in the discussion over the rights of Nature in Latin America? Based on three months of ethnographic research in the community of Sarayaku and more than twenty-five interviews with community members, this article addresses those important questions and argues that securing legal protection may not be a long-term resistance strategy.

Monograph - 2020

The Contentious Politics of Expertise. Experts, activism and grassroots environmentalism
Riccardo Emilio Chesta
Based on mixed-methods research and ethnographic fieldwork at various sites in Italy, this book examines the relationship between expertise and activism in grassroots environmentalism. Bridging the sociology of expertise and contentious politics, the book shows how conflict transforms, rather than inhibits, expertise production into a ‘contentious politics by other means’.

Journal Article - 2019

Alliance building and eventful protests: comparing Spanish and Portuguese trajectories under the Great Recession
Martín Portos & Tiago Carvalho
Social movement research has shed light on the relationship between processes of alliance building and multiple factors related to political opportunities, framing, identities, networks and resource mobilization. However, less is known about the impact of eventful protests on coalition building dynamics.
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Faculty of Political and Social Sciences Scuola Normale Superiore Palazzo Strozzi Piazza degli Strozzi 50123 Firenze Italy
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