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Cosmos

The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Fiorenzo Polito

PhD candidate

With an academic background in international studies, community development and applied interlinguistic communication, Fiorenzo is a social scientist and international development practitioner who has been engaged in non-governmental aid and research projects across Europe, Australia and the Pacific. He has addressed topics as gender and women’s empowerment, sustainable and resilient water, sanitation and hygiene, post-conflict reconciliation, diaspora organisations and international migration policies.

Fiorenzo is currently a Ph.D. student in Sociology and Political Science at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence. His research interests include critical development studies and practical post-development and decolonial approaches, international development systems and power asymmetries in North-South relations as well as evolutions of the non-profit sector at national and international level.

He is currently exploring the power structures of Italian development NGOs in relation to the systemic evolutions at the intersection of the political, economic and civil society spheres. He is interested in understanding how and why development organisations have changed over time in terms of governance and organisational models, as well as funding and interconnections with other political, economic and non-profit subjects.

Research interests: critical development, decoloniality, sociology of organisations, NGOs, and third sector

News

Publications

Edited Volume - 2026

Conspiracism and Political Conflict

Manuela Caiani, Marco Solinas, Hans-Jorg Trenz

Monograph - 2025

Free download for "Contentious Politics of Global Health Movements"

Donatella Della Porta, Stella Christou

Journal Article - 2025

Communication creates partial organization: A comparative analysis of the organizing practices of two climate action movements, Youth for Climate and Fridays for Future Italy

Marco Deseriis, Lorenzo Zamponi, Diego Ceccobelli
This article focuses on a neglected aspect of the climate action movement Fridays for Future, namely, the relationship between its mediated communication practices and its early organizational processes. Drawing from a strand of organizational communication that underscores the constitutive dimension of communication to organizing processes, we analyze the significance of mediatized leadership and networked communication for the foundation and early development of two national chapters of Fridays for Future: Youth for Climate (YFC) Belgium and Fridays for Future Italy (FFFI).

Journal Article - 2025

Power resources, territory and labour conflicts in the logistic sector

Donatella Della Porta, Marco Antonelli