Social Movements

This international multidisciplinary research network, established in May 2011, reached 120 scholars in 23 different countries and 18 disciplines within its first four months of existence and seems set to continue growing. With a directory of researchers studying social movements in Europe, circulation of announcements related to the field and a series of research initiatives, the network is a lively online presence, free to everyone working in the area.

While active citizenship and popular protest have been a perennial theme of European societies, European civil society has come in recent decades to have an increasingly transnational character, accelerating with the development of new social movements such as environmentalism and second-wave feminism, the fall of the Berlin wall, the rise of new right-wing movements and current unrest over economic crises from Greece to Iceland.

The CES Social Movements Research Network brings together scholars and graduate students located around the world and working within a multiplicity of disciplines to study the themes of social movements, popular protest and contentious politics in Europe, as well as the ways in which social movements interact with spheres such as the media, culture and memory, democratic institutions, policing, etc. and the longer-term outcomes of social movements both positive and negative.

While it welcomes scholars whose primary focus is national, regional or local, it also supports and encourages comparative and cross-national work, studies of transnational movements and those engaging with European institutions, as well as historical work on earlier generations of European social movements. The network is open to researchers from anywhere in the world who study social movements in Europe, from a range of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives. It is multilingual as far as scholarly work goes although we expect that administrative / coordinating discussions will be through English.

Its main goals are to build a network of scholars from a range of disciplines and career stages in order to foster collaborative and comparative work; to organize themed workshops and panels at conferences on areas of common interest; to develop work for joint publishing projects; to create webspace for working papers and dissemination initiatives; to provide an arena for the fruitful collaboration between scholars from different institutions and at different career stages; and to support the contribution of scholarship to processes of active citizenship at all levels in the democratic process.

So far the network has seen the development of a directory of members' research interests, working languages, and publications ; the opening of an online networking space for participants; a launch event at the CES Barcelona conference of Europeanists (June 2011); over 40 submissions for a book on "The European social movement experience"; events planned for the CES Boston conference (March 2012); and discussions around a networking event in Europe in 2012.

If you are a scholar working in the area of European Social Movements and would like to be a part of this network, please send the following information to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it :

Name
Academic affiliation (please include department / institute)
Email
Research homepage, if any
Research interests
Working languages
Details of up to three recent publications (with links if available online)

We will then send you an invitation to join the network.