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Cosmos

The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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Resources

JOURNALS

 

Forschungsjournal Soziale Bewegungen. Analysen zu Demokratie und Zivilgesellschaft

German peer-review journal founded in 1988. Published four times a year.

Interface. A Journal for and about Social Movements

International peer-reviewed, open-access and multilingual online journal founded in 2009. Published twice a year.

Mobilization. An International Journal 

International peer-reviewed journal founded in 1996. Published four times a year.

Partecipazione e Conflitto

Italian online and open-access peer-reviewed journal founded in 2009. Published three times a year.

Research in Social Movements Conflict and Change

International peer-reviewed journal founded in 1977. Published twice a year.

Social Movement Studies

International peer-reviewed journal founded in 2002. Published four times a year.

 

BOOK SERIES

 

Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics

Published by Cambridge University Press.
General Editors: Mark Beissinger, Jack A. Goldstone, Michael Hanagan, Doug McAdam, Suzanne Staggenborg, Sidney Tarrow, Elisabeth J. Wood, Deborah Yashar.

Mobilization Series on Social Movements, Protest and Culture

Published by Ashgate.
Series Editor: Hank Johnston

Oxford Studies in Culture & Politics

Published by Oxford University Press.
Series Editors: Bob Clifford and James Jaspers

Protest, Culture & Society

Published by Berghahn Books.
Series Editors: Kathrin Fahlenbrach, Martin Klimke, Joachim Scharloth

Social Movements, Protest, and Contention

Published by University of Minnesota Press.
Series Editors: Bert Klandermans and David S. Meyer

Protest and Social Movements Published by Amsterdam University Press

Series Editors: Jan Willem Duyvendak and James M. Jasper

 

RESEARCH CENTERS AND DEPARTMENTS

 

CADIS – Centre d’Analyse et d’Intervention Sociologiques

École des Haute Édutes en Science Sociales

Director: Philippe Bataille

Founded in 1981 by Alaine Touraine, since the very beginning CADIS focused on the sociology of action and social movements. Today, the study of mobilizations intertwine with three main axis of research: social actors and historical changes, the emergence of new subjectivies in post-industrial societies, and the crisis of urban environments.

Center for the Study of Democracy

University of California Irvine

Convenors: David Meyer and David Snow

The centre develops research aiming at understanding democratic development and democratic processes, focusing amongst other topics on social movements and collective action in the United States and across the globe.

Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy

Goldsmith College

Directors: Nick Couldry and Kate Nash

Co-Directors: Natalie Fenton and James Martin

Established in 2007, the centre develop research at the interconnection of media, communication, politics and sociology, considering amongst other topics global social movements, advocacy organisations and new media.

Centre for the Study of Social and Political Movements

University of Kent

Director: Chris Rootes

Etablished in 1992, the centre focuses on contemporary forms of social and political movements and collective action, with some emphasis upon environmental movements.

Center for the Study of Social Movements

University of Notre Dame

Director: Rori McVeigh

Established in 2006, the center supports an interdisciplinary approach to the study of collective political challenges expressed via protest, collective violence, and other extra-institutional collective action.

Centro de Estudos Sociais

University of Coimbra

Director: Boaventura de Sousa Santos

Established in 1978 the Center for Social Studies is a scientific institution devoted to research and advanced training in the area of the social sciences and humanities.

Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit

London School of Economics

Director: Mary Kaldor

The research unit focuses on how ordinary people shape or try to shape the decisions that affect their lives with a particular focus on human security and civil society, including social movements and civic associations.

CRAPUL – Centre de Recherche sur l’Action Politique

University of Lausanne

Established in 2002, the centre aims at promoting collective research on political action from the point of view of comparative political sociology.

Department of Sociology, University of California Santa Barbara

Chair: Verta Taylor

The department supports multi-level and multi-method approaches to social inquiry. For 30 years, the department has been at the forefront of research and graduate training in social movements, revolutions and social change.

Department of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh

Chair: Suzanne Staggenborg

The department fosters collaborative research between faculty and students and allows for specializations in sociological research, with a focus on social movements and politics and culture.

Forum for Civil Society and Social Movement Research

University of Gothenburg

Launched in 2011 to enhance the communication and collaboration of social movement scholars in the Nordic Countries, the Forum for Civil Society and Social Movement Research has its base at the Department of Sociology, with close ties to national and international research networks studying social movements.

Institute for Protest and Social Movement Studies

The institute is primarily a place for research. Its aim is to deliver and spread theoretically guided, empirically grounded and both scientifically and politically relevant knowledge in the field of protest and social movements. Along with its research activities, the institute also intends to become a center for research cooperation with other institutions at home and abroad.

Movement Media Research Action Project

MMRAP was founded in 1986 by the co-directors William Gamson and Charlotte Ryan to support marginalized constituencies’ understanding of and access to media. Based in Boston, MA, its mission is to strengthen progressive social movements working toward social justice and inclusive participatory democracy.

Observatori del Conflicte Social

University of Barcelona

Academic coordinators: Salvador Aguilar, María T. Bretones y Jaime Pastor

The Social Conflict Observatory is linked to the research group Research on Social Conflict and Change. It aims at developing knowledge about the logics of social conflict and change. The dominant analytical approach is relational: relationships between individual are the basic social units of social inquiry; and it relies as well on a critically oriented positive sociology.

Politics and Protest Workshop

CUNY Graduate Center, New York City

Coordinators: James M. Jasper and John KrinskyFounded in 2008, this weekly meeting draws students and faculty to discuss research and theory in progress on any topics having to do with protest and politics. It is open to all visitors.

 

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION NETWORKS

 

ASA Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements

Founded in 1980, the section fosters the study of emergent and extra-institutional social forms and behavior, particularly crowds and social movements. With about 800 members, it is one of the largest in the American Sociological Association.

ASA Section on Labor and Labor Movements

The Labor and Labor Movements Section strives to be a forum for existing work, to create networks and graduate mentoring opportunities that will stimulate interaction and increase the rigor and creativity of future work, to bring researchers, applied sociologists, and rank-and-file members of the labor movement together for discussion and debate.

CES Social Movement Research Network

Established in 2011, the CES Social Movements Research Network brings together scholars interested in social movements, popular protest and contentious politics in Europe, as well as in the ways in which social movements interact with spheres such as the media, culture and memory, democratic institutions, policing, and the longer-term outcomes of social movements both positive and negative.

ECPR Standing Group on Participation and Mobilization

Established in 2004, the ECPR Standing Group on Participation and Mobilization provides a forum for different schools of participation research to meet, compare approaches, and develop new research strategies.

ECPR Standing Group on Political Violence
The Standing Group aims to provide a collaborative network and infrastructure for international junior and senior scholars working on aspects of political violence, including guerrilla warfare, insurgency, terrorism, rebellion and civil war.

ESA RN25- Social Movement Research Network

The ESA Social Movement Research Network provides organize panels sessions in general and mid-term conferences on social movements from a sociological perspective.

 

BLOGS AND RESEARCH WEBSITES

 

Mobilizing Ideas

Founded in 2011, the blog Mobilizing Ideas is linked to the Center for the Study of Social Movements at the University of Notre Dame. It publishes invited original essays on social movements, social change, and the public sphere by leading scholars and engaged activists.

Open Democracy

Founded in 2001, it is an open access electronic magazine that publishes high quality analysis on relevant political and social issues, including social movements and collective actions.

ResponsiveGov

The website of the ResponsiveGov reserarch project, which aims at investigating to what extent governement respond to collective and publicly expressed opinion – also in the form of protests – between elections.

Tributes to Charles Tilly

A website with an extensive collection of annotated links to web resources about the life and work of Charles Tilly, a leading scholar in social movement studies.

 

PODCASTS AND VIDEOS

 

Social Movements, Political Violence and the State. 

LSE Public Lecture of Donatella della Porta
Event organiser: Department of Government Comparative Politics, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Can Social Movements Replace Parties? 
Danilo de Biasio interview to Donatella della Porta for Radio Popolare.

News

22/02/2023

15 fully funded PhD positions

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The Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, Italy is pleased to announce 15 PhD fellowships beginning on November 1, 2023. The deadline for applications is April 13, 2023.

16/02/2023

Applications now open! Fourth Edition of the ECPR-COSMOS Summer School on Methods for the Study of Political Participation and Mobilisation

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Applicants must send their application materials no later than March the 17th 2023.

10/01/2022

SNS announces 14 fully-funded PhD positions

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The Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, Italy is pleased to announce 14 PhD fellowships beginning on November 1, 2022.

16/07/2021

Prof. della Porta to lead VolkswagenStiftung-funded ECSEuro project

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Reflecting the European challenge of transnational cooperation and multiple crises, this project asks how local political initiatives across Europe enact citizenship and solidarity and contribute to the vision of a more democratic Europe from below.

09/07/2021

SNS announces 7 fully-funded PhD positions

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The Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore announces 7 fully-funded PhD positions. Deadline for applications: 21 August 2021.

28/09/2020

Four post-doctoral research positions on the pandemic

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The Scuola Normale Superiore announces four post-doctoral positions to be activated as part of the research project “After the coronavirus pandemic: The effects of the health emergency on society and knowledge.” 

Publications

Journal Article - 2023

Reflective Inclusion: Learning from Activists What Taking a Deliberative Stance Means.

Andrea Felicetti, Markus Holdo
We propose to adopt a principle we call “reflective inclusion,” which allows us to engage abductively with new actions that might expand and deepen our understanding of what deliberation may look like.

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 - 2022

Populists in power and conspiracy theories

Andrea Pirro & Paul Taggart
Looking at three cases of populists in government – Orbán in Hungary, Trump in the United States, and Chávez in Venezuela – we examine the definition of conspiring elites (who), the circumstances under which conspiracy theories are propagated (when), and the ultimate purpose of conspiratorial framing (why).

Journal Article - 2022

The mobilization for spatial justice in divided societies. Urban commons, trust reconstruction and socialist memory in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Chiara Milan
The article contributes to the urban studies literature and the study of social movements in divided societies by disclosing the distinctive features and mobilizing potential that the notion of urban commons retains in a war-torn society with a socialist legacy.

Journal Article - 2022

(Water) Bottles and (Street) Barricades: The Politicisation of Lifestyle-Centred Action in Youth Climate Strike Participation

Lorenzo Zamponi, Anja Corinne Baukloh, Niccolò Bertuzzi, Daniela Chironi, Donatella della Porta, Martín Portos
This article explores the forms of action adopted by participants in two Fridays For Future (FFF) strikes, focusing on the repertoires of action of (young) climate justice protesters. Drawing on protest survey data, it shows demonstrated that young protesters do not participate less in claim-based action than older cohorts. Furthermore, a process of politicisation can be seen to be unfolding that leads to increased commitment in both lifestyle and political forms of participation – at least among active milieus.

Journal Article - 2022

Performing (during) the Coronavirus crisis: The Italian populist radical right between national opposition and subnational government

Andrea Pirro
The first year of COVID-19 confirmed the standing of the populist radical right in Italy. While sitting in opposition at the national level, Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy and Matteo Salvini's League shared common criticism of the Conte II government but experienced diverging trajectories in terms of popularity. These changes can be partly attributed to the different agency of their leaderships. Overall and collectively considered, the Italian populist radical right broke even during the first year of COVID-19, but the crisis exposed the first cracks in Salvini's leadership.

Journal Article - 2021

Far-right protest mobilisation in Europe: Grievances, opportunities and resources

Pietro Castelli Gattinara, Caterina Froio & Andrea Pirro
In this article, we bridge previous research on the far right and social movements to advance hypotheses on the drivers of far-right protest mobilisation based on grievances, opportunities and resource mobilisation models. We use an original dataset combining novel data on 4,845 far-right protest events in 11 East and West European countries (2008–2018), with existing measures accounting for the (political, economic and cultural) context of mobilisation.

Monograph - 2021

Migrant Protest. Interactive Dynamics in Precarious Mobilizations

Elias Steinhilper
This book explores the interactions and spaces shaping the emergence, trajectory, and fragmentation of migrant protest in unfavorable contexts of marginalization.

Edited Volume - 2021

Contentious Migrant Solidarity. Shrinking Spaces and Civil Society Contestation

Donatella della Porta & Elias Steinhilper
Building upon social movement and migration studies, this book maps the two sides of ‘contentious solidarity’: a shrinking civic space and its contestation by civil society.

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.