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Cosmos

The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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2025-09-05

Social movement studies in intense times

A conference in honor of the work of Donatella Della Porta, call for papers

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3-4-5 June 2026 

COSMOS, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences,

Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence, Italy

The theoretical and methodological tools which have been essential components of research in social  movement studies are incessantly challenged as multiple crises intersect, transforming our social, political and  cultural landscapes. As neoliberalism, pandemics, war, genocide, climate change, right-wing backlash  challenge many achievements of progressive social movements, people actively mobilize against intersecting

inequalities and democratic backsliding in the streets, schools, universities, factories, rural areas,  neighbourhoods, institutions and online. This conference seeks to provide a space for discussing research in  contemporary societies in intense times – i.e. in moments of extraordinary political and social upheaaval – by  addressing key questions in social movements research:

  • Why do social movements emerge in, respond to, and shift in intense times?
  • How do intense times shape: micro-mobilization processes? processes of disengagement? activists’  trajectories? biographical outcomes?
  • How do forms of action change in intense times?
  • How do social movements select their strategies in intense times?
  • What is the impact of social movements in intense times?
  • How do social movements interact with other actors, like political parties, interest groups or NGO’s,  in intense times?
  • What is the role of new communication technologies in intense times?
  • How does the policing of protest change in intense times?

The conference will open with a plenary panel with the participation of Donatella Della Porta (Scuola Normale  Superiore /COSMOS), Mario Diani (Università di Trento), Olivier Fillieule (University of Lausanne), Michael  Keating (University of Aberdeen) and Sidney Tarrow (Cornell University).

In the evening, participants will  be invited to a social event. The Conference has no fees. Travel and accommodation costs are not covered.  We invite submissions from different theoretical, disciplinary and methological perspectives. To submit an  abstract please email the organizers with an abstract of no more than 250 words.

We are also looking for  volunteers to be discussants! If interested, please email to the organizers.

The deadline for all abstract  submissions is October 15, 2025. Participants to the Conference are required to write and submit a max.  7000-8000-word paper no later than 15th of May 2026, papers should be sent to cosmos@sns.it . 

News

Publications

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 - 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.

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.