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Cosmos

The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Archive

Donagh Davis

My doctoral research involves a historical-sociological analysis of contentious politics in early twentieth-century Ireland. Theoretically, I am interested in long-running debates about the relationship between ‘structure’ and ‘agency’ in the causation of revolutions and other episodes of political contention. My dissertation asks how such dynamics played out in Ireland – an ‘awkward’ case lying between […]

Claudius Wagemann

Claudius Wagemann is full professor for qualitative social science methods at the Goethe University, Frankfurt. Before, he had been working at the   Istituto italiano di scienze umane   (SUM) in Florence, at the European University Institute and at the study abroad program of New York University. Among others, he has published a textbook on QCA and […]

Mate Nikola Tokic

Mate Nikola Tokic is assistant professor of modern European and East European history at The American University in Cairo. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania (2007), MA from the London School of Economics (1996) and BA from Goucher College (1995). Before coming to the AUC, Tokic was a postdoctoral fellow in the […]

Julien Talpin

Julien Talpin is a research fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, France), member of the Research Center onAdministration, Politics and Society (CERAPS/University Lille 2). He received his PhD from the European University Institute (Florence), wherehe completed a dissertation on the individual and collective consequences of engagement in participatory democracy institutions. Comparing […]

Federico M. Rossi

Federico M. Rossi was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. After completing his Bachelor in Political Science at the Universidad de Buenos Aires he went to Florence. In Italy he obtained at the European University Institute a Ph.D. in Political and Social Sciences in 2011. His research interests have included national and transnational social movements, protest, […]

Anja Röcke

Anja Röcke is assistant professor (“wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter”) at the Institute for Social Sciences at Humboldt-University, Berlin. After her studies in social sciences in Berlin and Paris, she wrote her Ph.D. on “Frames of citizen participation. Participatory budgeting in France, Germany and the United Kingdom” (forthcoming 2013) at the European University Institute, Florence. She has published […]

Sonia Pires

Post-doc fellow and lecturer at Centre for Geography Studies, Lisbon University Research interests : migration studies, political mobilization and participation

Grzegorz Piotrowski

I graduated from social anthropology and philosophy at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. I wrote my doctoral dissertation at the European University Institute in Florence Italy. The thesis, entitled “Alterglobalism in Postsocialism. A Study of Central and Eastern European Activists” was supervised by prof. Donatella della Porta and was defended in July 2011. […]

Daniela R. Piccio

Daniela R. Piccio is Research Fellow at the University of Turin. She received her PhD at the European University Institute of Florence and worked as a Research Associate at Leiden Universityon in the context of the ERC-project ‘Reconceptualizing Party Democracy’ directed by Prof. I. van Biezen. Here, she has been focusing on party (finance) regulation […]

Timothy Peace

Timothy Peace is a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Stirling. He completed his PhD at the European University Institute (EUI) in 2010 with a thesis examining the involvement of British and French Muslims in social movements. He then held research fellowships at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and the University of […]

Lorenzo Mosca

Lorenzo Mosca is Associate Professor at the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Scuola Normale Superiore. His research interests are focused on political communication, online politics, political participation and social movements. On these topics he has been involved in several national and European research projects such as “Europub.Com – The Transformation of Political Mobilisation […]

Mayo Fuster Morell

Mayo Fuster Morell concluded her PhD thesis entitle “Governance of online creation communities. Provision of infrastructure for the building of digital commons” at the European University Institute in 2010. She is currently a fellow at the Berkman center for Internet and society (Harvard University), and a researcher at the Institute of Government and Public Policies […]

Pierre Monforte

I completed my PhD in Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in 2008. From 2008 to 2011, I was a post-doctoral fellow and part-time lecturer at the Université de Montréal. Since 2011, I am a lecturer at the University of Leicester, in the Department of Sociology. My research interests relate to social […]

Raffaele Marchetti

Raffaele Marchetti (Laurea, Rome; PhD, London) is assistant professor in International Relations  at LUISS where he holds a Jean Monnet European Module on   EU’s Engagement with Civil Society  . His research interest concerns global politics and governance, transnational civil society, and democracy. He was scientific coordinator of FP6 project  SHUR. Human Rights in Conflicts: The […]

Stefania Milan

Stefania Milan is an Assistant Professor of New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and the founding director of the Data J Lab dedicated to ‘Big Data’ analytics (currently relocating from Tilburg University to Amsterdam).Before joining the University of Amsterdam, she was an Assistant Prof. of Data Journalism at Tilburg […]

News

01/07/2024

Le basi istituzionali di un panico morale

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Attraverso una lunga rassegna di casi concreti, Donatella Della Porta, direttrice di Cosmos, descrive il processo per cui la lotta istituzionale all'antisemitismo in Germania, inizialmente promossa dalla società civile progressista, si è trasformata nella costruzione di un apparato statale e di una struttura di potere ufficiale come strumento di razzializzazione e repressione.

14/06/2024

The Far-right and conspiraciy theories from Covid to the European elections

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Donatella Della Porta, Cosmos Lab director, has researched on “Regressive movements in time of emergency” using the case of protests against anti contagion measures. In this case as in many others (from the conservative “anti gender”  European farmers) protesters pictured themselves as an abused minority of powerless victims fighting against some hidden and organized power. This frame seems to be a version of those being used by populist (mainly far-right) parties against Europe. We asked Della Porta to explain why and how conspiracy theories and this kind of posturing is keen to fall for the political offer of rightwing parties.

10/06/2024

Social movements, Coronavirus and the right to healthcare

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The 2020 pandemic has brought renewed focus on public healthcare and many mobilizations both on healthcare systems and vaccine patents. What are the peculiarities of right to healthcare movements? A talk with Cosmos Lab member Stella Christou

03/06/2024

Far right movements and the European elections

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Intersections and differences among far right politica Europan parties and movments, transatlantic exchanges, the role of mobilizations at the grassroots level. An interview with political scientist Andrea Pirro

17/05/2024

An open letter on freedom of expression and protest on Palestine by the European social movement studies community

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As social movement scholars we express strong concerns about the growing trend to restrict the right of expression, critique, and protest in several countries in Europe. Signed by research centres, journals and standing groups.

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)

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.