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).