Donatella della Porta
Donatella Della Porta is a professor of Political Science and director of the PhD programme in Political Science and Sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, where she also heads the Centre for the Study of Social Movements (Cosmos).
The topics she has worked on throughout her career are wide-ranging. However, in the academic sphere, Donatella della Porta is one of the most recognised specialists in the study of social movements, political violence, terrorism, corruption, protests and police control. All these issues are fundamental to making democratic life possible. In fact, a few years ago she led a major European Research Council (ERC) project, ‘Mobilising for Democracy’, on the participation of civil society in democratisation processes in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.
She holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Lausanne, Bucharest, Gothenburg, Jyväskylä and the University of the Peloponnese. In 2011, she was awarded the Mattei Dogan Prize for her contributions to the field of political sociology.
She is the author or editor of over 90 books. Her most recent publications include, amongst others, Guerra all’antisemitismo? Il panico morale come strumento di repressione politica (Altreconomia, 2024); Partecipare e comunicare durante una pandemia (Il Mulino, 2024); Contentious Politics in Emergency Critical Junctures (Cambridge University Press, 2022); Labour conflicts in the digital age (Bristol University Press 2022, with R. Chesta and L. Cini), The encyclopedia of political and social movements (Wiley, 2nd edition. 2022, with D. Snow, D. McAdam and B. Klandermans); Resisting the Backlash: Street Protest in Italy (Routledge, 2022); La corruzione come sistema (Il Mulino, 2021, with Alberto Vannucci); Social Movements: An introduction, 3th edition (Blackwell, 2020); Can Social Movements Save Democracy? (Polity, 2020).
Programme
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN INTENSE TIME
From 19 to 23 October 2026
(Click here to download the programme in pdf)
Guest Lecturer: DONATELLA DELLA PORTA
(Scuola Normale Superiore / Firenze)
LECTURES
- Democracy in movements: participation in theory and practices
- Networking in action: the protest for a Free Palestine in European perspective
- Bringing capitalism back in: labour movements in late neoliberalisms
- Temporalities in transfeminism: between memory and prefiguration
- Repressing dissent: colonial policing and the weaponisation of antisemitism
The sessions were held in English in the Sala de Graus of the Faculty of Letters of the UdG from Monday to Friday from 11.30 a.m. to 13.00 p.m..
Registration is free, but you must book your place by email: dir.cfm@udg.edu
Other activities
Donatella della Porta will give a talk open to the general public at the La Mercè Cultural Centre in Girona on Tuesday 20 October at 6.30 pm, entitled “Times intensification: how protests break structures”.
Millions of citizens mobilise in Spain to claim their rights to a house; millions of students take the streets in France to fight for their right to education; millions of workers strike in Italy to oppose the increasing militarization and in solidarity with the starving population in Gaza. While protests are usually constrained by long lasting structures, in some moments, people make history, Building upon research on contemporary social movements, this lecture addresses the intensification of times, by looking at how, suddenly and often unexpectedly, democracy is enacted in the squares, where new relations are created, a sense of empowerment spread and new collective identities and solidarities emerge.
Simultaneous interpretation will be provided. Admission is free, but registration is required here.
Abstracts and Recommended Reading
The series of talks addresses how progressive social movements react to democratic backsliding. In times of multiple crises, the convergence of various struggles happens during intense waves of protest that target main trends in capitalist exploitation, societal discrimination, militarization, genocide, racism, colonialism, environmental destruction. While social movements are affected in their development by the contextual opportunities and resources, it is mainly in action, during the struggle, that those opportunities and resources are created by building new relations as well as new solidarities and collective identities. A relational approach to contentious politics will be adopted in order to address these dynamics.
Democracy in movements
(Discussant prof. Giada Bonu)
Progressive social movements play a central role in defending participatory and deliberative visions of democracy. This happens through both their experimenting with democracy within their decision making processes and their struggles to improve democracy within state and societal institutions. Democracy emerges then as a contested concept.
Suggested readings.
- Della Porta, D. (2025), Rethinking social movements in intense times, in Mobilization: An international Journal, 30 (1), 1-12.
- Della Porta, D., LR Parks, M Portos (2024) Social movements and Europeanisation: framing ‘responsibility’and ‘responsiveness’ in times of multiple crises, Journal of European Public Policy 31 (4), 1100-1125
Networking in action: the protest for a Free Palestine in European perspective
(Discussant Prof. Martin Portos)
Social movements are, by definition, networks of individuals and organizations that mobilize through mainly unconventional means in order to transform politics and society. A main element in the emergence and development of movement campaigns is in fact their capacity to converge on shared platforms. The huge and global movement for a Free Palestine provides a main illustration of the ways in which networking develops during contentious action.
Suggested readings.
- Della Porta, D., Stagni, F., Christou, S., & Portos, M. (2026). Prefigurating democracy: The pro-Palestinian student camps as eventful protests. The Sociological Quarterly.https://doi.org/10.1080/00380253.2025.2597438
- Della Porta, D., Mendoza, L., Portos, M., & Stagni, F. (2025). ‘Free Palestine!’: protesting Israel’s war on Gaza in Italy and Spain. South European Society and Politics.https://doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2025.2523042
Bringing capitalism back in: labour movements in late Neoliberalism
(Discussant Prof. Martin Portos)
Social movements are affected by structural transformations. The revival of labour struggles under neoliberal capitalist conditions shows how workers are able to construct resources of power by adaptation in their organizational format, but also by activating ideational and coalitional resources. Similarly, generational dynamics are affected and affect structural transformations,
Suggested readings.
- della Porta, D., and Antonelli, M. (2025). Power resources, territory and labour conflicts in the logistic sector: a relational perspective on the Mondo Convenienza struggle. Social Movement Studies, 1–16.
- della Porta, D., & Antonelli, M. (2025). A chain of workers’ struggles: How labour protests spread in time and space. Economic and Industrial Democracy, 0(0).
- D Della Porta, M Portos (2023) Rich kids of Europe? Social basis and strategic choices in the climate activism of Fridays for Future. Italian Political Science Review/Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica 53 (1 ), 2449,
Temporalities in transfeminism: between memory and prefiguration
(Discussant Prof. Giada Bonu)
Time plays an important role in the development of social movements as memories of previous struggles are transmitted from one generation to another, reflected upon and transformed. Especially in Southern Europe, intersectional feminism has shows how innovations in the organizational forms, the repertoire of action and the collective frames are rooted within a long lasting history of struggles for women’s rights.
Suggested readings.
- D. Della Porta, G Bonu Rosenkranz (ed.), (20249 Feminist Movements in Time and Space: A European Perspective, Palgrave.
- G. Bonu Rosenkranz, D della Porta (2024) Disentangling intersectionality in action: the new cycle of contention of feminist movements in Italy, European Journal of Politics and Gender,
Repressing dissent: colonial policing and the weaponisation of antisemitism
(Discussant Prof. Martin Portos)
Not only in authoritarian countries, waves of protests are often accompanied by an intensification of repression—all the more so when they challenge social inequality, racism and colonialism. While repression is carried out mainly by state institutions, countermovements, pressure groups and mass media often converge in moral panic campaigns for law and order. The repression of expression of solidarity with Palestine shows how accusation of antisemitism are weaponised by racist actors.
- D. Della Porta (2024) Moral panic and repression: The contentious politics of anti-Semitism in Germany Partecipazione e Conflitto 17 (2), 276-349
- Della Porta, D. (2025), Politics of Exclusion: Repressing Protests on US Campus, Partecipazione e conflitto 18 (1), 1-27.
Invited specialist
Prof. Giada Bonu Rosenkranz and Prof. Martín Portos,, both from the Scuola Normale Superiore (Florence), will also take part in the sessions; they have been invited by the Chair at the request of Donatella della Porta herself.