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Cosmos

The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Summer School on Youth Political Participation in Times of Inequalities

EURYKA and COSMOS invite applications for the upcoming Summer School on “Youth Political Participation in Times of Inequalities” which will be held in Florence (Italy) in July 2018, from Tuesday 17th to Sunday 22nd.

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We are pleased to announce that the call for applications is now open for the Summer School on Youth Political Participation in Times of Inequalities, sponsored by the Reinventing Democracy in Europe: Youth Doing Politics in Times of Increasing Inequalities project (EURYKA) and the Centre on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS). The Summer School will take place in Florence, Italy, from the 17th to the 22th of July 2018 and will open to 20 graduate students as well as early career researchers throughout Europe and beyond with a specialized interest in youth participation and democracy, in different fields of study and methodological traditions, including political science, political sociology, political communication, political anthropology and sociology. It will address fundamental issues such as:

  • How do young people form their opinions and take actions to bring about social and political change?
  • What strategies do young people develop to cope with growing inequalities, collectively and individually?
  • How do these strategies relate to issues of democracy, power, politics, policy-making, social and political participation (online and offline) and the organization of economic, social and private life?
  • How can participation of young citizens be encouraged and increased through their interest in involvement and how democratic models could be reshaped in order to make room for young people’s interests and aspirations?
  • Which are the prospects and potentials for youth agency and political engagement online and offline in Europe? What do technological developments mean for young people’s ways of doing politics?

The Summer School will bring together young scholars and more established academics interested in these issues through an intensive curriculum of lectures with established scholars and workshops with young activists. From the 19th to the 22nd of July 2018, in parallel to the Summer School, European Alternatives will hold a Democracy Campus for activists. The campus will promote the emergence of transnational political and cultural forms of activism through workshops, masterclasses, seminars and performances. It will deal with issues ranging from precarity, to municipalism, to new media and artistic strategies, and will address questions of how activism can influence institutions and build democracy across borders. All the Democracy Campus events will be open to Summer School participants and there will be co-organized events.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

The Summer School will include four keynote speeches. Confirmed keynote speakers are:

  • Gema M. Garcia Albacete, Department of Social Sciences, Universidad Carlos III, Madrid.
  • Donatella Della Porta, Political and Social Sciences Department, European University Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Florence.
  • Jennifer Earl, School of Sociology, University of Arizona, Tucson.
  • Marco Giugni, Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Geneva.

DATES AND LOCATION

The Summer School will take place in Florence and will last 6 teaching days, from the 17th to the 22th of July 2018.

APPLICATION

Applicants should email a cover letter (i.e. two pages) in which they explain how their research is in line with the topic covered by the Summer School, a 500-­‐word abstract of a proposed academic paper, and a curriculum vitae to euryka.summerschool@gmail.com. The deadline for applications is the 18th of December 2017.

Applicants will be informed of the outcome by email no later than 30th of January 2018. Those offered places must confirm their participation within 10 days, after which places may be offered to applicants on the reserve list.

REQUIREMENTS

Participants to the Summer School will be required to write and submit a 7000-8000 word paper before the 1st of June 2018. The paper will be presented during the Summer School, providing a unique experience for discussion and feedback from established academics and young activists. English will be the working language and therefore students are expected to have a good command of written and spoken English.

Participants will be also required to complete the mandatory readings for morning lectures and to actively participate in discussion during morning and afternoon sessions.

ENROLLMENT FEES

There are no participation fees in the Summer School. Lunches, welcome drinks, a farewell dinner, academic materials, computing and internet facilities will be available for free for selected participants. Travel and accommodation costs are not included, however the EURYKA project can offer 2 travel and accommodation grants (€500 each) to selected participants. Please indicate in your submissions whether you would like to apply for these grants.

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Scientific Committee: Lorenzo Bosi, Marco Giugni and Stefania Voli

CONTACTS

Email contact for application, questions and clarifications about the Summer School: euryka.summerschool@gmail.com

FINANCIAL AND LOGISTIC SUPPORT

The Summer School is kindly supported by:

  • Reinventing Democracy in Europe: Youth Doing Politics in Times of Increasing Inequalities project (EURYKA). The EURYKA project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 727025.
  • Centre on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS) at the Scuola Normale Superiore.

News

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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.

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Publications

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

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.

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

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).

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

(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.

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 - 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.