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Cosmos

The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Ahmed Samy Loft

PhD candidate

Ahmed Samy Lotf is a Ph.D. student in Sociology and Political Science at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence. His research focuses on the learning process of revolutionary movements while facing several types of state repression. He examines collective/individual reactions of actors within those movements, their role of producing knowledge collective and individual within their surroundings to be used as knowledge inserted in future movements. Along with that, the research takes into consideration political psychology, social and historical contexts of those movements.

Dissertation research question and title : What and How do revolutionary movements learn from their past experiences and events? Examining the Revolutionary Learning Process using the Algerian Revolutionary Movement towards regime change.

Academically, before joining the PhD program in SNS, Ahmed earned two master’s degrees in subjects related to political sciences. The first MA degree was in International Relations & Diplomacy from the American Graduate School in Paris. He graduated (Honors) in 2016 with a thesis on international order and new types of diplomacy (case study: the Arctic Council). His second MA degree in Democracy and Human Rights in Saint Joseph University in Lebanon as part of an international program called Global Campus for Human Rights and Democracy and graduated in 2019. His degree was studied in both Lebanon and Morocco and done his master thesis analyzing the effects of the EU Foreign Policy on Refugees Migration crisis (case study: EU-Turkey Statement).

Research interests: social movements, revolutionary movements, repertoires of contention, learning processes, Algerian Movements, memory studies, authoritarianism, migration, and geopolitical relations

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