2023 ECPR-COSMOS Summer School

2023 ECPR-COSMOS Summer School on Methods for the Study of Political Participation and Mobilisation

The Call for Application is now open for the Fourth Edition of the Summer School on Methods for the Study of Political Participation and Mobilisation, organized by the ECPR Standing Group on Participation and Mobilization and the Centre on Social Movement Studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore.

The Summer School will take place at the Scuola Normale Superiore, in Florence, from June 5th to June 16th 2023. Participants School will focus on how to analyse present and past forms of grassroots participation activated by social movement and civil society actors at the local, regional and transnational level.

More in general, it aims at disseminating knowledge on how to investigate processes and mechanisms that sustain the active citizens’ participation and mobilisation in the realm of politics. Grassroots participation and radical democracy have been at the centre of the public and political debate in the last two decades. Massive popular protests and new populist challengers have deeply impacted European politics both in the streets and in representative institutions. Furthermore, digital technologies are reshaping the mechanisms of political socialisation, organisation and participation. The emergence of new protest movements and the changing dynamics of political participation require scholars to reflect on the research strategies and methodologies that are employed to study grassroots participation and radical democracy. Although there is a considerable amount of research done both on how social movements and civil society actors mobilise and on the radical innovations in political participation, specialised literature on how to actually investigate these phenomena is rare, although increasingly necessary. The Summer School will address this gap discussing how to apply the most common methods in the social sciences to investigate political participation and mobilisation.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS AND ACADEMIC PROGRAMME

The Summer School will include three keynote speeches on social movements and research methods. Confirmed keynote speakers are: Donatella della Porta (Scuola Normale Superiore); Mario Diani (Università di Trento); Swen Hutter (Freie Universität Berlin).

The Summer School will last 10 teaching days for a total of 60 hours of didactic activities. The Summer School will cover the following topics (the names of the instructors will be published in the next few days):

• surveys in political participation and mobilisation;
• ethical issues in social movement and political participation research;
• interviewing activists;
• focus groups and group interviews;
• visuals in the study of social movements;
• ethnography and participant observation;
• protest event analysis and political claim analysis;
• discourse analysis and frame analysis in social movement research;
• experimental methods in participation and mobilisation research;
• historical methods;
• participatory action research;
• doing fieldwork during violent conflicts;
• online tools and digital methods for the study of participation and mobilisation;
• social network analysis.

LOCATION

The Summer School will take place at Palazzo Strozzi, that hosts the Scuola Normale Superiore, in Florence, Italy.

CONTACTS

Email contact for questions and clarifications about the Summer School: pam.summerschool[AT]gmail.com

ORGANISING COMMITTEE

Felix Butzlaff (Central European University, convenor of the ECPR SG on Participation and Mobilisation)

Donatella della Porta (Scuola Normale Superiore, director of COSMOS)

Lorenzo Zamponi (Scuola Normale Superiore, member of the steering committee of the ECPR SG on Participation and Mobilisation)

FINANCIAL AND LOGISTIC SUPPORT

The Summer School is kindly supported by:

• European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), Standing Group on Participation and Mobilisation
• Scuola Normale Superiore, Department of Social and Political Sciences.

APPLICATION

The Summer School is open to 20 graduate and master students as well as early career researchers with a specialised interest in participation and mobilization in different fields of study, including political science, political sociology, political communication, and political anthropology from throughout European and beyond.

Applicants must email a cover letter in which they explain how the Summer School would be beneficial for their research, a 250-word abstract of their proposed paper, and a curriculum vitae no later than March 19th: to pam.summerschool[AT]gmail.com

Applicants will be informed of the outcome by email as soon as possible. Those offered places must confirm their participation within 7 days, after which places may be offered to applicants on the reserve list.

REQUIREMENTS

Students will be required to write and submit a 7.000-8.000 words paper before the starting of the Summer School. The paper will be then presented and discussed during one of the afternoon sessions.

Students will be also required to complete the mandatory readings for morning lectures and method sessions and to actively participate in discussion during morning and afternoon sessions.

Successful participation in the Summer School will be fully accredited with 30 credits and a certificate of participation.

English will be the working language of the Summer School. Therefore, students are expected to have a good command of written and spoken English.

ENROLLMENT FEES

Full fees for the Summer School are €400 and cover tuition costs, academic materials, lunches, welcome aperitivo & farewell dinner, use of library, computing and internet facilities.

Fees will not cover travel and accommodation costs, but registered participants will have the opportunity to book single and double rooms in the University Residence of the Scuola Normale Superiore at a very convenient rate, pending availability.

Details of how to pay the fees and book the room will be emailed to all selected participants.

For more information have a look at the Summer School webpage.