Scuola Normale Superiore

The Scuola Normale Superiore is a public institute for higher education with unique features: student selection exclusively based on merit, lessons on a seminar basis, deeply intertwined teaching and research, an integrated college life, and the encouragement of international exchanges based on the best European model of higher education. In Pisa, lecturers, researchers and students inhabit the same spaces, with teaching and laboratory activities, cultural events and experimental initiatives all taking place in a single area.

The Scuola Normale Superiore (SNS) has recently established a new Political Science and Sociology Department in Florence. The main research areas are organized around the following topics: Democracy and social movements: In this area, sociological and political science competences converge around political sociology, which bridges the two disciplines through its main focus on the reciprocal influence of political and social transformations. Social movements, civil society, participative democracy, political violence, new media and conflicts are the main concepts addressed in the teaching and research activities. Comparative/global public policy and international governance: This area addresses, in an innovative way, themes such as the comparative analysis of public policies; the global dimension of public policies; the multilevel governance of public policies, that is the structural and processual characteristics that influence how public policies are decided and implemented in multilevel institutional processes (from the sub-national to the national, and from the supra-national to the international ones, with due attention to the European Union). Comparative politics and society: this area is oriented towards the comparative analysis of some main politico-institutional processes, focusing on the interactions between political parties, interest groups, civil society and the public opinion. The project will be administered by a specific unit within the SNS administration, the Research Administration. This unit, which has long standing experience, deals exclusively with the management of externally funded grant contracts and is responsible for the proposal submission, contract negotiation, financial and administrative day to day management of the project, preparation of cost statements and contacts with external sponsors.

Members of the Italian team

Dr Lorenzo Bosi is the principal investigator of the Italian team. He received his Ph.D. in politics from Queen’s University, Belfast, in 2005 and is the past recipient of the ECRC (University of Kent), Jean Monnet and Marie Curie (EUI) post-doctorate fellowships. His research interests include social movements and political violence. Lorenzo Bosi has published in several journals, including Mobilization, Qualitative Sociology, Research in Social Movement, Conflict and Change, Historical Sociology, The Sixties, Social Science History, and Critique International. He is co-editing two manuscripts Dynamics of Radicalization (Ashgate) with Dr. Stefan Malthaner and Dr. Chares Demetriou; and Relational Dynamics and Processes of Radicalization (Oxford University Press) with Prof. Eitan Amili and Dr. Chares Demetriou. For more information visit: https://sns.academia.edu/lorenzobosi

Dr Lorenzo Zamponi received his Ph.D. in political and social sciences from the EUI. His research interests include public memory, contentious politics, student movements, anti-austerity activism and media analysis. For more information, visit: https://sns.academia.edu/LorenzoZamponi