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Cosmos

The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Florian Carl

PhD candidate

Florian is a PhD candidate in Political Science and Sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore and a member of the Center of Social Movement Studies (COSMOS). His PhD project is related to multi-front anti-colonial struggles and decolonization efforts within Europe, especially related to Sápmi. He looks at the potentiality of relationships across encounters of communities at the frontline of the climate crisis, exploring the dynamics emerging from particular material, political, and cultural realities. In contrast to the widespread academic tendency of speaking back to colonial frameworks, Florian’s work follows radical visions of the future as guidance for present actions. This approach entangles his research with the work of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour, 2-Spirited/queers/feminists, and anti ableists.
Florian holds a B.A. in Development Studies with a major in Human Geography/Ecology from Lund University. After that, he worked as a research assistant and as a project coordinator for different initiatives by international research organisations and NGOs. For example, he engaged with the Club of Rome’s “Reclaim Economics“ campaign and worked for 3 years within the “People’s Climate Case” team, a human rights-based climate litigation against EU institutions. In 2018, he completed a Master’s in International Political Economy at King’s College London and in the following year a Research Master’s in Visual Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Florian also writes debate articles, mostly for Al Jazeera, and is passionate about making electronic music. He works within the recently established Cloudberry Collective and supports climate justice efforts, especially by Indigenous communities like at the COP in Katowice and Madrid, in Sápmi, and in London.
Research Interests: community organizing; coloniality; decolonization; relationality; futurity

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