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Cosmos

The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Elias Steinhilper

Member

Elias Steinhilper is a political sociologist and migration scholar currently based in Florence. He studied Political Science and Sociology in Berlin (FU Berlin), Colchester (University of Essex) and Freiburg. In May 2018 he obtained a PhD in Political Science and Sociology at Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence for a thesis on political protest by marginalized migrants, supervised by Prof. Donatella della Porta. He has hold visiting researcher positions at HU Berlin, UC Berkeley and SciencePo Paris. His academic interest is located at the intersection of political sociology, migration & border studies, contentious politics, and urban studies. His research has been published or is forthcoming in Sociology, Social Inclusion, Social Movement Studies and in various book chapters. Beyond academia, Elias has interned as a Human Rights observer in Chiapas, with the United Nations (OHCHR), worked as a (radio) journalist, and has been involved in various migrant solidarity and urban garden initiatives.

Research interests: Contentious politics, migration studies, and political sociology

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News

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.

21/06/2019

Call for papers: "The Nation and the Radical Left - Practices and Discourses of National Identity in Left-Wing Politics"
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The call for papers is now open for a conference on national identities and left-wing politics.

18/06/2019

Call for papers: “Class without consciousness” – The Politics of Fragmented Class Identities
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The call for papers is now open for a two-day conference on class and identities at the Scuola Normale Superiore on 14-15 November 2019

Publications

Journal Article - 2020

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.

Journal Article - 2020

Reverting trajectories? UKIP’s organisational and discursive change after the Brexit referendum
Ofra Klein & Andrea Pirro
While showing UKIP’s projection into a new phase of its political lifecycle, the findings qualify the notion that the party has radicalised its (online) discourse as a result of (offline) organisational changes.

Special Issue - 2020

The Cultural Side of Populism: Politics, Emotions, Music and Subcultures in Populist Times
Manuela Caiani & Enrico Padoan
This special issue aims to combine an analytical perspective with an empirical focus on current populism(s) in Europe and their cultural aspects.

Journal Article - 2020

On corruption and state capture: The struggle of anti-corruption activism in Hungary
Andrea Pirro & Donatella della Porta
The article draws on social movement theory to understand collective action against corruption in Hungary. While offering a perspective on anti-corruption activism, the article demonstrates its limits against a set of unfavourable factors.

Monograph - 2020

Discursive Turns and Critical Junctures: Debating Citizenship after the Charlie Hebdo Attacks
Donatella della Porta, Pietro Castelli Gattinara, Konstantinos Eleftheriadis & Andrea Felicetti
The book offers an in-depth analysis of the unfolding of the public debate in terms of content of claims making, framing, and justifications as well as the quality (deliberativeness) of the discourses by a variety of actors in the public sphere.

Journal Article - 2020

Systemic Unsustainability as a Threat to Democracy
Andrea Felicetti
In a context of resilient unsustainability, protesters have little expectation that institutions might address the ecological crisis and this view is likely to spread. New ways of thinking about this problem and a new research agenda are needed.

Journal Article - 2020

Populism and the (Italian) crisis: The voters and the context
Manuela Caiani & Enrico Padoan
This article, focusing on Italy, aims to broaden our understanding of the recent striking electoral fortunes of (differing types of) populism in the country, by locating them within multiple crises (political, economic, migration) that have shocked Europe in the last two decades.

Journal Article - 2020

Nationalism and populism on the left: The case of Podemos
Jacopo Custodi
This article provides an empirical exploration of the relation between nationalism and populism on the left of the political spectrum.

Journal Article - 2019

Tokens or Stakeholders in Global Migration Governance? The Role of Affected Communities and Civil Society in the Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees
Stefan Rother and Elias Steinhilper

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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