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Cosmos

The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Donatella della Porta

Donatella della Porta is professor of sociology at the European University Institute, where she directs the Center on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos). She is also directs a major ERC project Mobilizing for Democracy, on civil society participation in democratization processes in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. Among her very recent publications are:

Methodological Practices in Social Movement Research (Oxford University Press, 2014) |Can Democracy be Saved? (Polity Press, 2013) |Clandestine Political Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2013) | Blackwell Encyclopedia on Social and Political Movements (with D. Snow, B. Klandermans and D. McAdam eds., Blackwell, 2013) | Mobilizing on the Extreme Right (with M. Caiani and C. Wagemann, Oxford University Press, 2012) | Meeting Democracy (ed. with D. Rucht, Cambridge University Press, 2012) |The Hidden Order of Corruption (with A. Vannucci, Ashgate 2012)

In 2011, she was the recipient of the Mattei Dogan Prize for distinguished achievements in the field of political sociology.

The Emergence of a European Social Movement Research Field

Cosmos, the Centre on Social movement studies at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute, is glad to invite you to the following lecture:

On November 28, in the Theatre, at 11am– 1 pm

Prof. Mario Diani (University of Trento) will speak on The Emergence of a European Social Movement Research Field.

The talk illustrates the emergence and consolidation of research on social movements and grassroots collective action within European social science. Rather than on intellectual debates, it focuses on the growth of a distinct professional and organizational field, connected through collaborations that include, among others, co-authorships, conduction of major research projects, promotion of specific journals, and the like. Basic network analytic tools enable us to map the evolution of collaborations between social movement researchers in Europe over three phases, corresponding to the years 1978-1990, 1991-2001, and 2003-2012.

Rights as Weapons in Political Conflict

Cosmos, the Centre on Social movement studies at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute, is glad to invite you to the following lecture:

On November 26, in Seminar room 2, at 3 – 5pm

Prof. Bob Clifford (Duquesne University) will speak on Rights as Weapons in Political Conflict.

Rights are usually viewed as defensive concepts representing mankind’s highest aspirations to protect and uplift the vulnerable. But since the Enlightenment, political combatants have also used rights belligerently–to batter despised communities, demolish existing institutions, and smash opposing ideas. Examining historical and contemporary conflicts, this paper describes how activists sharpen rights into weapons: by naturalizing, absolutizing, universalizing, and depoliticizing them. The paper shows how they wield rights: to camouflage ulterior motives, break rival coalitions, attack policies, and explode societies. Finally, the paper analyzes how targets repulse the assault, often by fashioning contrary rights. Comparing key episodes in rights’ rise, the paper raises troubling new questions about a concept we thought we knew. Among contemporary cases considered are the use of animal rights, gay rights, and women’s rights in settings as diverse as the Catalan nationalist movement, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the Afghanistan war.

Grassroots Environmentalism

A Lecture from Prof. Susanne Staggenborg (University of Pittsburgh)

This event is part of the activities organised by COSMOS, the Consortium on Social Movements.

5 June 2012, from 11 AM to 5 PM, Seminar Room 4, Badia Fiesolana

Focusing on social movements as part of broader contentious politics, it promotes theoretically-driven empirical analyses on forms, dimensions, causes and impacts of social movements, in established democracies as well as authoritarian regimes. In order to improve synergies and networking among researchers in social movement studies, Cosmos organizes conferences, colloquia, public lectures, seminar series and other public events that will bring together expertise from the EUI as well as from other universities.

COSMOS is born

Cosmos is born!

Inaugural event of the Centre on Social Movement Studies

On the 30th April 2012, 15:00-17:00 – Theatre, Badia Fiesolana

The Centre on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos) is the first research centre of the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute. It focuses on social movements as part of broader contentious politics.

Donatella della Porta will chair this inaugural event, during which László Bruszt will give a welcome speech representing the department of Social and Political Sciences. The main speaker, professor Sydney Tarrow of the Cornell University, will give a talk on “Occupying America: Lessons for Social Movement Theory”.

Can Democracy be saved? Participation, Deliberation and Social Movements

On 5th February 2013 Professor della Porta gave a public lecture at the London School of Economics, entitled ‘Can democracy be saved? Participation, deliberation and social movements’.

Audio of the lecture, which was organised by the prestigious Ralph Miliband Programme, can be downloaded here

Can social movements replace parties?

Danilo de Biasio, journalist of the network Radio Popolare, interviewed Donatella della Porta during the program #qualcosadisinistra on the topic:

“I movimenti possono sostituire i partiti?” (Can movements replace parties?)

The video of the interview, broadcasted on the 14th February, is online on the website of Radio Popolare.

The Italian government and the future of the ‘Partito Democratico’

Donatella della Porta published two opinion pieces in the website of “Sbilanciamoci!”, an Italian umbrella organization dealing with globalization, peace and alternatives to the current budgetary policies. In these articles she expressed her point of view on the re-election of Giorgio Napolitano as Head of state, on the formation of the new Italian government sustained by a large coalition that includes both Berlusconi’s party and the center-left, and on the future of the Partito Democratico.

The article “Il governo Bunga-Bunga e la protesta dentro al PD” focuses on the possible negative consequences of this choice for the Italian Democratic Party and on the increasing distance between the party elites and its supporters, voters and militants, with a comparative reference to the previous cases of the Greek PASOK and of the Italian Socialist Party. The text has been translated in Greek on the website rednotebook.gr.

The article “L’elezione di Napolitano e l’inciucio” describes the complicate context of the last election of the President of Italy, focusing on the different political solutions represented by the four main candidates Marini, Prodi, Napolitano and Rodotà, abut also on the (broken) dialectic between the Partito Democratico’s bureaucratic elites and its mobilized militants. This article is available also in spanish on the website sinpermiso.info.

Donatella della Porta Doctor honoris causa in Political and Social Sciences

Donatella della Porta has been awarded the prestigious title of Doctor honoris causa in Political and Social Science from the University of Lausanne. The conferring ceremony will take place on 23 May 2014 in Lausanne.

Social Movements, Political Violence and the State: Public Lecture of Donatella della Porta

The Department of Government Comparative Politics of the London School of Economics and Political Science invited Donatella della Porta to held a public lecture on “Social Movements, Political Violence and the State” on 17 February 2014. The podcast of the lecture is available online.

Download the Audio of the Event

Speaker(s): Professor Donatella Della Porta

Chair: Dr Omar McDoom

From Gezi Park in Istanbul to Tahrir Square in Cairo, as well as in the heart of Europe, threatened regimes have faced down massive protests with brutal repression. But when do mass social movements go underground and choose violence? Della Porta brings to bear her extensive research into left-wing, right-wing, ethnonationalist, and religious forms of political violence to answer this question. The comparison of quite different cases of escalation allows to single out the competitive dynamics of radicalization both inside social movements and between them and the state.

Donatella Della Porta is professor of political science and political sociology at the European University Institute with a distinguished record of research into social movements and political violence.

Omar McDoom is assistant professor in comparative politics in the Department of Government at LSE.

Event organiser: Department of Government Comparative Politics, London School of Economics and Political Science.

War, States and Movements

Sidney Tarrow, Emeritus Professor of Government at Cornell University inaugurated the academic year at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence with a Lectio Magistralis entitled “War, States and Movements: Lessons for the New Century”. Prof. Donatella della Porta , Director of COSMOS and Professor at Scuola Normale Superiore, introduced the lecture.

A video of the entire inagural event, held on 21st October 2014 at Palazzo Strozzi, is now available on Youtube at the following URL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07Xsbh2uT-M&list=UUaTK_MP4BC2_MvXx2xlj7kg

The Lectio Magistralis starts after 1h 27′, and it is preceded by the intervention of other invited speakers.

Initial list of invited speakers:

Fabio Beltram (Director of Scuola Normale Superiore)
Dario Nardella (Mayor of Florence)
Alberto Tesi (Dean of the University of Florence)
Stefano Fantoni (President of ANVUR – Agenzia Nazionale di Valutazione del Sistema Universitario e della Ricerca)

School for Advanced Studies “Civil Society, Democracy and Contention”

The Post-graduate Program in Sociology of the Rio Grande do Sul Federal University (Brazil), in partnership with the Centre for the Study and Documentation of Post-Secular Societies of the Università di Roma – Tor Vergata (Itlay), organized an International School for Advanced Studies dedicated to the fields of civil society, democracy and contention.

The first aim of the international school, hosted in Porto Alegre from 24th to 27th November 2014, is to celebrate thirty years of democracy in Brasil. Twenty distinguished invited scholars will present their research on the relationship between democracy and protest, with a particular focus on social movements. In particular, the director of COSMOS Donatella della Porta will intervene in the fifth section of the school, focused on “Protest, Police and Violence”, on Tuesday 25th November at 6:30 PM local time (9:30 PM in Italy).

The entire program of the school is available on the website of the event.

The event can be followed in private Live Streaming on Youtube.
Interested users can send an email to contato@socionautas.com.br to access to the videos, or to preguntas@socionautas.com.br to send a question to the speakers.

Democracy under Threat – LeG conference

The association “Libertá e Giustizia”, in collaboration with the trade union of knowledge workers “FLC CGIL” and with the organization “Libera”, will organize on 27 and 28 February a conference dedicated to the current threats to democracy, with a particular focus on the Italian and European situation.

The event will host a roundtable dedicated to the recent book of the COSMOS director Donatella della Porta “Can Democracy Be Saved”, published by Polity Press. The author will discuss the themes rised in the book with Sandra Bonsanti (Libertá e Giustizia), Gustavo Zagrebelsky, Sergio Labate (University of Macerata) and Elisabetta Rubini Tarizzo (Lawyer).

 

For further information and to register to the event, please send an email to info@libertaegiustizia.it.

5 PhD positions at SNS Florence

The Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence and the University of Bologna offer five fully funded PhD positions in Political Science and Sociology.

The programme focuses on the following three research areas:

  • Democracy and social movements;
  • Comparative/global public policy and international governance;
  • Comparative politics and society.

The grant is of three years. A fourth year can be added based on merit. Full coverage of research expenses (conferences, summer schools, research periods abroads) is provided.

The Faculty is exclusively devoted to PhD teaching and supervision. The activities will be held at the seat of Florence of the Scuola Normale Superiore (Institute of Human and Social Sciences)

For more information please visit the following URLs:

http://phd.sns.it/en/political-science-and-sociology

http://phd.sns.it/en/call-applications/

Deadlines: 31 August 2015

Was that Just the Beginning? Talking about Gezi after two years.

Movimenti del Mondo is a series of debates and documentaries/movies promoted by the Scuola Normale Superiore and organized by Lorenzo Bosi (SNS), Donatella Della Porta (SNS/EUI) and Alice Mattoni (EUI).

The first event of the series focuses on the 2013 Turkish protests that initially emerged to oppose the construction of a mall in Gezi Park, Istanbul. These protests had a strong international and national resonance, shifting during the following months to more generic political issues, and successfully spreading to the rest of the country.

Location : Palazzo Strozzi, Sala “L’Altana” Scuola Normale Superiore, Firenze

Date : 21 May 2015, 3:30-7 PM

Early afternoon roundtable (3:30 – 4:30 PM)

Chair : Elias Steinhilper (SNS)

Speakers: Erdem Yorük (Koç University, Turkey), Semih Celik (EUI) and Donatella della Porta (SNS/EUI)

Late afternoon/evening session (5-7 PM)

Chair: Kivanc Atak (EUI)

Projection of the documentary “Love Will Change the Earth”

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News

21/03/2024

CFP: Feminism as a method - Feminist Epistemologies, Methodologies and Methods in Social Sciences

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International Conference 14-15 November 2024 Anastasia Barone, Giada Bonu Rosenkranz and Donatella della Porta (Scuola Normale Superiore)

16/05/2023

CFP: Analyzing protest in the digital age. Challenges and opportunities in combining text and video sources

Organizers Donatella della Porta, Scuola Normale Superiore Swen Hutter, Freie Universität Berlin & WZB Berlin Social Science Center Place and date WZB Berlin Social Science Center, December 7-8, 2023

22/02/2023

15 fully funded PhD positions

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The Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, Italy is pleased to announce 15 PhD fellowships beginning on November 1, 2023. The deadline for applications is April 13, 2023.

16/02/2023

Applications now open! Fourth Edition of the ECPR-COSMOS Summer School on Methods for the Study of Political Participation and Mobilisation

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Applicants must send their application materials no later than March the 17th 2023.

10/01/2022

SNS announces 14 fully-funded PhD positions

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The Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, Italy is pleased to announce 14 PhD fellowships beginning on November 1, 2022.

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.

Publications

Journal Article - 2023

Resisting right-wing populism in power: a comparative analysis of the Facebook activities of social movements in Italy and the UK

Niccolò Pennucci
This paper aims to present a comparative study of the civil society reaction to right-wing populism in power through social media, by looking at cases in Italy and the United Kingdom.

Journal Article - 2023

Emotions in Action: the Role of Emotions in Refugee Solidarity Activism

Chiara Milan
This article investigates the different types of emotions that result from participation in refugee solidarity activism, investigating how they change over time and to what extent they explain why individuals remain involved in action in spite of unfavorable circumstances.

Journal Article - 2023

‘Love is over, this is going to be Turkey!’: cathartic resonance between the June 2013 protests in Turkey and Brazil

Batuhan Eren
This study addresses the question of why and how a protest can inspire individuals in distant countries. Taking the June 2013 protests in Turkey and Brazil as cases, it investigates the reasons why the Turkish protests were framed as one of the inspirational benchmarks by some Brazilian protesters.

Journal Article - 2023

Mutual aid and solidarity politics in times of emergency: direct social action and temporality in Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic

Lorenzo Zamponi
From the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and the social distancing measures introduced created a series of social problems and needs that were partially addressed in Italy as well as in other countries by grassroots mutual aid initiatives. While many of these initiatives were strongly rooted in the Italian social movement and civil society landscape and the choice to engage in mutual aid activities was the result of long years of reflection and planning, the article shows how strongly the temporality of emergency affected the nature of these initiatives, their development and their outcomes, in particular with regard to the extraordinary number of people who volunteered and their relationship with politicisation processes.

Monograph - 2023

Populism and (Pop) Music

Manuela Caiani, Enrico Padoan
The book provides a detailed account of the links between production of popular culture to the rise of populism and contributes to studies on populism and popular culture in Italy, using a comparative approach and a cultural sociology perspective

Monograph - 2022

Labour conflicts in the digital age

Donatella della Porta, Riccardo Emilio Chesta, Lorenzo Cini
From Deliveroo to Amazon, digital platforms have drastically transformed the way we work. But how are these transformations being received and challenged by workers? This book provides a radical interpretation of the changing nature of worker movements in the digital age, developing an invaluable approach that combines social movement studies and industrial relations. Using case studies taken from Europe and North America, it offers a comparative perspective on the mobilizing trajectories of different platform workers and their distinct organizational forms and action repertoires.

Monograph - 2022

Resisting the Backlash: Street Protest in Italy

Donatella della Porta, Niccolò Bertuzzi, Daniela Chironi, Chiara Milan, Martín Portos & Lorenzo Zamponi
Drawing interview material, together with extensive data from the authors’ original social movement database, this book examines the development of social movements in resistance to perceived political "regression" and a growing right-wing backlash.

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.

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 - 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.