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The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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FIERCE – Feminist Movements Revitalizing Democracy in Europe

TEAM

Donatella della Porta, Giada Bonu Rosenkranz, Anna Lavizzari, and Anastasia Barone

WEB SITE

START YEAR 2022

END YEAR 2025

FIERCE aims at providing sound theoretical and practical knowledge and tools to revitalize alliances between the feminist movement, civil society and political decision makers in a context of growing social inequalities, political disaffection and strengthening of populist radical right anti-gender actors and discourses. The research uses an interdisciplinary, multi-dimensional and multi-level framework, that aims to overcome the limitations of both disciplinary scholarships and nationalist methodologies. FIERCE develops in-depth understanding of feminist and anti-feminist/anti-gender movements, activities and discourses, and their impact on the institutional arena and on policy outcomes, focusing on the period 2010-2021. These actors, and especially the feminist movement, will be studied through framing, political ethnography and Social Network Analyses on the background of key gender debates and controversies prefigured to be situated in the areas of: labour market; health and reproductive rights; LGBTQ+ rights; migration; and gender-based violence. FIERCE will cover eight case studies (France, Italy, Greece, Slovenia, Turkey, Denmark, Poland, Spain) representing a wide variety of country contexts in socio-political, geographical and welfare terms. FIERCE moves beyond a country- based approach and provides a cross-cutting comparative analysis of the way debates and controversies on gender have influenced the dynamics and output of the policy process. Building on co-creation methods and on a strong alliance with civil society organisations, FIERCE proposes pilot actions that can reinvigorate democratic practices, in line with feminist inclusive visions for the future of democracy. FIERCE thereby sets out a bottom-up, problem-driven and impact-oriented approach, bridging academic knowledge, policy-making and bottom-up democratic strategies.

                                  

FUNDING

European Commission

 

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