Spring School on 'Democratic Backsliding and Political Conflict'
Conveners
Organized by the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the Scuola Normale Superiore in collaboration with the European University Institute of Fiesole (European Governance and Politics Programme, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies), the School is funded by the PNRR through the MERITA, the network for talent project* and by the EUI.
Date: 30 March - 2 April 2026
Location: Scuola Normale Superiore, Palazzone di Cortona, Cortona (Arezzo) and European University Institute, Florence
Max participants: 20
Language: English
Application deadline: 7 January 2026, 5 PM CEST (UTC+2)
The Scuola Normale Superiore (Italy) invites applications from doctoral students for the 2025 Ph.D. School on Democratic Backsliding and Political Conflict. The PhD School will be held at the Palazzone di Cortona, one of the sites of the Scuola Normale Superiore, in the small town of Cortona in southern Tuscany, Italy and at the European University Institute (planeary session only). The school will take place from March 30 to April 2, 2026..
Description
The Phd School will offer an invaluable opportunity for young scholars to explore the complexities and challenges of democratic erosion across different regions (and their resistance) from a variety of disciplinary and methodological perspectives.
Studies of political participation and mobilisation are increasingly focusing on democratic regression and the political actors (far right political parties, reactionary social movement organizations, populist ‘movement-parties’, anti-gender actors in both movements and institutions, etc.) who act as ‘entrepreneurs’ of it. This edition will focus particularly on placing gender equality and intersectionality at the center of political contestation. Anti-gender movements and political parties actively oppose feminist politics, women, LGBTI+, and racialized people’s rights, delegitimizing and attacking gender, sexuality, and race equality organizations, policies, and institutions. Opposition to gender equality contributes to democratic backsliding by curtailing democratic rights and attacking key democratization forces such as feminist politics.
The same is true of public opinion, electoral and party politics studies, which increasingly focus on the norms, values, opinions, attitudes that might embed it and the mechanisms of regressive orientations of society and collective political actors and policy makers. This also poses important methodological challenges that go beyond the analytical ones, in terms of reflecting on the research methods that are better suited to capturing these current trends in the European and global spheres. The Internet and social media are also part of the story, including various processes they mediate.
To explore the contextual, meso-organisational and micro-level attitudinal and value characteristics that accompany and sustain democratic backsliding in online campaigning, contentious politics, political participation and elections, this PhD school will focus on several key themes and methods: social movements and collective actors, identities and networks on the regressive side, with attention to anti-gender politics; the intersection of media and democratic backsliding; comparative analyses of European democracies, and beyond, including the role of civil society and grassroots movements in resisting democratic decline; how political elites and state institutions may contribute to or combat backsliding (such as feminist institutional response to anti-gender and far-right politics); the impact of European Union policies on democratic resilience, examining how EU membership can both support and constrain democratic reforms in member states. Together, their diverse perspectives will provide a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the multifaceted dynamics of democratic backsliding, offering both theoretical frameworks and practical approaches for addressing these issues. This Phd School will engage participants from a variety of academic disciplines, ensuring a multidisciplinary approach and methodological pluralism to understanding democratic erosion. It welcomes papers on geographical areas and actors that are underrepresented in current research and media coverage.
Application procedure
The PhD School will be advertised through a competitive international call. The PhD School is open to 20 Ph.D. researchers. Applicants from the SNS are welcome.
Applicants should submit a curriculum vitae and a short cover letter (no more than 1 page) outlining how their research focus fits with the topic of the PhD School and how participation in the school would benefit their research. These materials should be submitted as one PDF by sending an email to Prof. Manuela Caiani (manuela.caiani@sns.it) and Lorenzo Cicchi (lorenzo.cicchi@eui.eu) before January 7, 2026. Accepted candidates will be notified no later than 15 January, 2026.
Enrolment fees, accommodation and location
There are no enrolment fees. The organisers will assist in providing accommodation in either single or double rooms in hotels in Cortona and Florence. Travel and accommodation costs for the duration of the stay need to be covered by the participants. Lunch, the two social dinners and coffee breaks are covered by the School. Cortona is a small town in the South of Tuscany, Italy, in easy reach by train from Florence or Rome. Classes will take place in the same location.
Programme of the PhD School
The PhD School consists of three days with lectures (5 lectures) by prominent scholars in the field of political science and political sociology, and sessions on feedback of students projects/papers presentations in the afternoon (3 Feedback Sessions). The students will have a theoretical session and a more applied session on their projects/methodological session every day. Students will also get feedback from experts in the field about their own research projects.
In particular, the School will include a series of applied methodological workshops on qualitative and mixed-method approaches to the study of democratic backsliding, designed to actively engage participants throughout the entire duration of the program.
Monday, 30 March - European University Institute, Badia Fiesolana (Florence)
14.00 – 14.30 Welcome coffee
14.30 – 15.00 Introductory remarks and practical information, European University Institute, Badia Fiesolana | Erik Jones and Lorenzo Cicchi (EUI), Manuela
Caiani and Emanuela Lombardo (SNS)
15.00 – 17.00 Plenary session with keynote speech: Cristóbal Rovira-Kaltwasser (Pontificial Catholic University of Chile) - Far right and populism from a comparative regional perspective
19.30 Conference Dinner (no cost to participants)
Tuesday, 31 March - Scuola Normale Superiore, Palazzone di Cortona (Arezzo)
9.00 Transfer by bus from Florence to Cortona (no cost to participants)
11.00 Arrival and transfer to participants’ hotels
From 13.00 Coffe break will be available for participants at the Palazzone of Cortona
14.00 – 14.20 Welcome and practical information in Cortona | Manuela Caiani (SNS)
14.20 – 15.50 Lecture 1: Lawyers in backsliding democracy | Scott Cummings (UCLA School of Law)
15.50 – 16.20 Coffee Break
16.20 – 17.50 Feedback Session: students' presentations, 15’ each, and discussion. Parallel sessions can be organized **Panel 1 and 2**
17.50 – 19.30 Method session 1. Nicolò Pennucci (University of Namur) and Elena Cossu (EUI) - LLM techniques, text analysis and Illiberal speech
Wednesday, 1 April - Scuola Normale Superiore, Palazzone di Cortona (Arezzo)
10.00 – 11.30 Lecture 2: Emanuela Lombardo (SNS) - Anti-gender politics and feminist response
11.30 – 12.00 Coffee Break
12.00 – 13.30 Lecture 3: Kenneth Greene (UT Austin; EUI) and Andres Reiljan (University of Tartu; EUI) - Politics in the context of polarization and autocratization
13.30 – 14.30 Lunch
14.30 – 16.00 Feedback Session: students' presentations, 15’ each, and discussion. Parallel sessions can be organized **Panel 3 and 4**
16.00 – 16.30 Coffee Break
16.30 – 18.00 Lecture 4: Manuela Caiani (SNS) - Far-Right Movements and Parties and the Transnationalization of Illiberalism
18.00 – 19.00 Method session 2: Martin Portos (SNS) - Youth, participation and radicalization: quantitative data & datasets
20.30 Conference dinner (no cost to participants)
Thursday, 2 April - Scuola Normale Superiore, Palazzone di Cortona (Arezzo)
10.00 – 11.30 Lecture 5: Iva Nenadić (EUI) - Where Is the News Media in Democratic Backsliding?
11.30 – 12.00 Coffee Break
12.00 – 13.30 Feedback Session: students' presentations, 15’ each, and discussion. Parallel sessions can be organized **Panel 5 **
13.30 – 14.30 Lunch
14.30 – 15.30 Method session 3: Silvia Díaz Fernández (CSIC, Madrid) - Digital ethnography on anti-gender and far-right actors
16.30 Transfer by bus from Cortona to Florence (no cost to participants)
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* MERITA, the network for talent project is the result of a collaboration between five Italian academic institutions: the Scuola Normale Superiore, the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, the Collegio Superiore dell’Università di Bologna, the Scuola Galileiana di Studi Superiori dell’Università di Padova and the Scuola Superiore di Studi Avanzati della Sapienza Università di Roma.
The MERITA project is funded within the Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza (PNRR), Missione 4 – Istruzione e Ricerca, Componente 1, Investimento 3.4 "Didattica e competenze universitarie avanzate"- "Rafforzamento delle Scuole universitarie superiori". (National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), Mission 4 – Education and Research, Component 1, Investment 3.4 "Advanced university teaching and competences" - "Enhancement of the institutions for higher education").
Photo by Geoff Livingston via Flickr | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0