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Cosmos

The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Sophia Wathne

PhD candidate

Sophia is a PhD candidate in Political Science and Sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore and member of the Center of Social Movement Studies (COSMOS). Her research is on the global Food Sovereignty movement and how it can challenge common conceptions of sovereignty within political theory. Furthermore, she looks at whether the Food Sovereignty Movement can inspire new ways of structuring environmentally sustainable and democratic communities.

Sophia attained her B.A. and M.A. in Political Science at the University of Copenhagen, with a semester abroad at University of California, San Diego. For her M.A. she specialized in political theory and focused on the interplay between political theory and social movements, specifically the Greek Solidarity Movement in Athens.

Her research interests are political theory relating to political action outside the conventional political institutions, with a focus on democratic experiments and prefigurative politics, especially in the global south. It is important for Sophia to be a part of the decolonization of academia by giving space to the voices and agency of activists from the global south who are often overlooked.

Sophia is a co-editor of the Danish feminist and decolonial journal Marronage and is a decolonial, feminist and environmental activist. She attained her Permaculture Design Certificate in 2017 in Palestine and has been involved in the Food Sovereignty movement in Palestine and Denmark.

Research interests: democracy and social movements, prefigurative politics, political theory, autonomy and insurrection, and food sovereignity

News

Publications

Edited Volume - 2026

Conspiracism and Political Conflict

Manuela Caiani, Marco Solinas, Hans-Jorg Trenz

Monograph - 2025

Free download for "Contentious Politics of Global Health Movements"

Donatella Della Porta, Stella Christou

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 - 2025

Power resources, territory and labour conflicts in the logistic sector

Donatella Della Porta, Marco Antonelli