Keynote Speaker, 1 November 2025, 09:30 – 10:15
“Resisting the backlash: the transformative potential of progressive social movements”: will address the role of social movements in resisting a backlash against democracy. Taking the protests in solidarity with Palestine as an illustration, della Porta will look at how moments of crisis are resisted by grassroots mobilizations through the development of innovative forms of action, organisational models and collective identities.
Donatella della Porta is Professor of Political Science, Founding Dean of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, and Director of the PhD Programme in Political Science and Sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, where she also leads the Centre on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS). Her research focuses on social movements, political violence, terrorism, corruption, the police and protest policing. She directed the ERC project Mobilizing for Democracy on civil society participation in democratisation processes across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.
She has received numerous distinctions, including the Mattei Dogan Prize (2011), the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award (2021), and the John D. McCarthy Award for Lifetime Achievement (2024). She is an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Accademia dei Lincei. She holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Lausanne, Bucharest, Gothenburg, Jyväskylä, Cyprus and the Peloponnese, and is the author or editor of numerous books, articles, and contributions in edited volumes (h-index 101; 57,000 citations). Among her recent books are: 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), with Alberto Vannucci, Student Movements in Late Neoliberalism. Forms of Organization, Alliances, and Outcomes (Springer, 2021); Social Movements: An introduction, 3rd edition (Blackwell, 2020); Can Social Movements Save Democracy? (Polity, 2020), Discursive Turns and Critical Junctures, Oxford University Press, 2020).
