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The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Summer School on Concepts and Methods for Research on Far-Right Politics

The ECPR Standing Group on Extremism & Democracy is holding its first Summer School on ‘Concepts and Methods for Research on Far-Right Politics’ at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, 25-29 June 2018.

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The ECPR Standing Group on Extremism & Democracy, the Centre for Research on Extremism (C-REX), and the Centre on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS) are pleased to announce the program of the upcoming Summer School on ‘Concepts and Methods for Research on Far-Right Politics’, which will be held at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, Italy, from Monday 25 to Friday 29 June 2018.

DOWNLOAD THE SUMMER SCHOOL FLYER

 

Summer School Description

The Summer School focuses on the study of the far right in its populist, radical, and extremist manifestations. Its aim is to bolster and promote knowledge on the theoretical, empirical, and methodological underpinnings of contemporary far-right politics. The School will focus on how to study and interpret the different manifestations of far-right politics across time, arenas, and national contexts. The School will introduce students to concepts and theories explaining the conditions affecting far-right mobilisation and performance; and methods to tackle this phenomenon empirically. Despite the growing attention received by far-right political parties, social movements, and groups, we still lack a comprehensive conceptual and methodological toolkit to investigate its diverse expressions in the multi-organisational field. The School will thus address young scholars and students, and discuss how to apply established research techniques to the study of far-right politics, and create, retrieve, and manage available data. In sum, the School intends to create an interactive learning environment where graduate students will have the opportunity to:

  • Learn and familiarise with the conceptual and theoretical foundations of far-right politics, and draw on comparative empirical expertise on far-right mobilisations, electoral performances, and violent manifestations;
  • Understand the rationale and practices of a number of methods employed to study far-right politics, at the micro, meso, and macro levels;
  • Develop the skills to confidently rely on mixed-method approaches and methodological pluralist practices in their own research projects;
  • Present their ongoing research and receive feedback from leading scholars in the field.

 

Location and Activities
The Summer School will take place in Florence and will last five teaching days, from 25 to 29 June 2018. The Summer School will include two keynote speeches and five teaching days focusing on particular themes related to the overall topic of the Summer School:

Day 1: Monday, 25 June

  • Keynote speech (9.30AM-11-30AM, Aula Altana): ‘The Study of the European Far Right: Towards a Fourth Wave?’, Cas Mudde, University of Georgia
  • Theory class: Theories and concepts of the far right (Cas Mudde, University of Georgia)
  • Methods class: Historical and archival research (Matteo Albanese, University of Lisbon)

Day 2: Tuesday, 26 June

  • Theory class: Populist radical right parties in Europe (Andrej Zaslove, Radboud University)
  • Methods classes: Mass surveys (Andrej Zaslove, Radboud University); Expert surveys (Andrea L. P. Pirro, Scuola Normale Superiore)

Day 3: Wednesday, 27 June

  • Theory class: The far right as a social movement (Pietro Castelli Gattinara, University of Oslo, and Andrea L. P. Pirro, Scuola Normale Superiore)
  • Methods classes: Interviewing and life histories (Giorgia Bulli, University of Florence); Protest event analysis (Pietro Castelli Gattinara, University of Oslo)

Day 4: Thursday, 28 June

  • Theory class: Far-right violence in Western Europe (Jacob Ravndal, University of Oslo)
  • Methods classes: Quantitative data on political violence (Jacob Ravndal, University of Oslo); Ethnographic approach (Kathleen Blee, University of Pittsburgh)

Day 5: Friday, 29 June

  • Theory class: Far-right political communication (Caterina Froio, Catholic University of Lille)
  • Methods class: Internet and social network analysis (Caterina Froio, Catholic University of Lille)
  • Keynote speech (3.30PM-5.30PM, Aula Altana): ‘Gender and the Far Right’, Kathleen Blee, University of Pittsburgh

 

Organisers:

Pietro Castelli Gattinara (C-REX, University of Oslo)
Andrea L. P. Pirro (COSMOS, Scuola Normale Superiore)

 

 

News

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.

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.” 

Publications

Journal Article - 2023

Reflective Inclusion: Learning from Activists What Taking a Deliberative Stance Means.

Andrea Felicetti, Markus Holdo
We propose to adopt a principle we call “reflective inclusion,” which allows us to engage abductively with new actions that might expand and deepen our understanding of what deliberation may look like.

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 - 2022

Populists in power and conspiracy theories

Andrea Pirro & Paul Taggart
Looking at three cases of populists in government – Orbán in Hungary, Trump in the United States, and Chávez in Venezuela – we examine the definition of conspiring elites (who), the circumstances under which conspiracy theories are propagated (when), and the ultimate purpose of conspiratorial framing (why).

Journal Article - 2022

The mobilization for spatial justice in divided societies. Urban commons, trust reconstruction and socialist memory in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Chiara Milan
The article contributes to the urban studies literature and the study of social movements in divided societies by disclosing the distinctive features and mobilizing potential that the notion of urban commons retains in a war-torn society with a socialist legacy.

Journal Article - 2022

(Water) Bottles and (Street) Barricades: The Politicisation of Lifestyle-Centred Action in Youth Climate Strike Participation

Lorenzo Zamponi, Anja Corinne Baukloh, Niccolò Bertuzzi, Daniela Chironi, Donatella della Porta, Martín Portos
This article explores the forms of action adopted by participants in two Fridays For Future (FFF) strikes, focusing on the repertoires of action of (young) climate justice protesters. Drawing on protest survey data, it shows demonstrated that young protesters do not participate less in claim-based action than older cohorts. Furthermore, a process of politicisation can be seen to be unfolding that leads to increased commitment in both lifestyle and political forms of participation – at least among active milieus.

Journal Article - 2022

Performing (during) the Coronavirus crisis: The Italian populist radical right between national opposition and subnational government

Andrea Pirro
The first year of COVID-19 confirmed the standing of the populist radical right in Italy. While sitting in opposition at the national level, Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy and Matteo Salvini's League shared common criticism of the Conte II government but experienced diverging trajectories in terms of popularity. These changes can be partly attributed to the different agency of their leaderships. Overall and collectively considered, the Italian populist radical right broke even during the first year of COVID-19, but the crisis exposed the first cracks in Salvini's leadership.

Journal Article - 2021

Far-right protest mobilisation in Europe: Grievances, opportunities and resources

Pietro Castelli Gattinara, Caterina Froio & Andrea Pirro
In this article, we bridge previous research on the far right and social movements to advance hypotheses on the drivers of far-right protest mobilisation based on grievances, opportunities and resource mobilisation models. We use an original dataset combining novel data on 4,845 far-right protest events in 11 East and West European countries (2008–2018), with existing measures accounting for the (political, economic and cultural) context of mobilisation.

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.

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.