Andreas Bieler, University of Nottingham/Vincenzo Maccarrone, Scuola Normale Superiore Over the last two decades, the European Union (EU) has faced a series of intertwined crises, including the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 and the structural adjustment programmes imposed by the EU and the IMF on several member states; the increase of flows of refugees triggered […]

Parlare di censura dei libri, al giorno d’oggi, può sembrare qualcosa di anacronistico, per lo meno nei paesi che si considerano democrazie. In realtà, però, risulta adeguato e particolarmente doveroso viste le pericolose iniziative messe in campo da diversi governi e attori politici in giro per il mondo. In particolare negli Stati Uniti d’America il […]

While I write these lines, I am on a train to Milan Malpensa airport, from where I will depart in a few hours for Cuba with the European Convoy for Cuba – the air contingent of the Nuestra América Convoy, an international solidarity initiative promoted by a global coalition of associations, trade unions, and other […]

The Italian-German Historical Institute of the Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) is organising a conference on 19-20 November 2026 entitled Europe in Movement(s). Genoa 2001 and Transnational Mobilisations in Historical Perspective. Proposals are invited. The G8 summit in Genoa (19-22 July 2001) is often described as the high point of the international mobilisation against neoliberal globalisation […]

A Call for papers for a special issue of Partecipazione e Conflitto on “Contentious Politics in Spain: Cycles, Transformations and New Repertoires of Contention” . Over the last two decades, Spain has become a particularly fertile laboratory for the study of contentious politics. From the alter-globalisation mobilisations of the early 2000s to the anti-austerity cycle, […]

CALL FOR PAPERS  Special issue on Mobilizing memory: repression and resistance (Memory Studies Review, 2028) Guest editors: Jamievee Bautista, Scuola Normale Superiore Stefano Filippini, Scuola Normale Superiore   This Memory Studies Review special issue is based on a conference held in November 2025 at the Center on Social Movements Studies (COSMOS), Scuola Normale Superiore in […]

From bird guano to be used as fertilizer to rare earths, the world economy and our everyday lives were dependent, and they still are, on raw materials. The mining or collection, storage, transport and commercialization of raw materials and primary commodities is at the core of Extractive Capitalism, How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global […]

Organized by Scuola Normale Superiore, the school is funded by the PNRR through the MERITA, the network for talent project*. Date: 20-23 April 2026 Location: Scuola Normale Superiore, Palazzone di Cortona (AR) Total hours: 28 Max participants: 20 Language: English Application deadline: 10 February 2026 Target audience: Master student, PhD students and early-career researchers. The […]

The winter program for our Cosmos Talks is here – 29th January, 11-12.30h. 2N Room, Palazzo Vegni Gianluca de Fazio (James Madison University, USA), Remembering Lynchings: The Racial Terror Memory Movement in the US This talk explores the rise of a memory movement over the past two decades that seeks to publicly acknowledge and memorialize […]

The broad issue of Germany’s history and its relation with the country’s reaction to the Hamas attack on October 7 2023 were at the center of professor Dirk Moses talk at the “Protesting Crises: Progressive Social movements in the Face of Authoritarian Backlash” international conference. Professor Moses presented his work for a paper to be […]

What happened during Latin America turn to the left and how did it end, what was the reaction from the opposite political side? What kind of polarization has occurred in individual countries? These, in a nutshell, are the questions that Santiago Anria, political scientist from Cornell University, tried to answer in his talk during the […]

This Mobilization special issue explores legal mobilization, the strategic use of legal tools by social movements to drive social and political change. As a key repertoire of contentious action, legal mobilization has generated substantial interdisciplinary scholarship, particularly within civil rights and environmental movements. Despite its increasing importance amid growing repression and far-right backlash, comparative analyses […]

Antisemitism is being weaponized against those who have taken the streets against the war in Gaza (Cosmos director Donatella Della Porta wrote about the case of Germany). There are many examples of the induced moral panic since the start of the war. Neve Gordon, who is professor of international law and human rights at Queen […]

The intensification of protests in Italy to present and some general reflections on what came to be known
as a global social movement for a free Palestine

What is the trend in armed conflicts around the world? Siri Aas Rustad, from the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, presented data on conflict trends gathered by the The data are gathered by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program  at the Summer School on War, Peace and the World Order. Before watching at the data, it […]