Social Conflicts at the times of “Polycrisis”

A 3,000-word essay and oral (online) discussion

Primary audience: Visiting students and EELISA partners. Also open to Ph.D students but cannot be used to fulfill degree course requirements.

This is an integrative, research-based seminar presenting different streams of investigation on social conflicts that are being undertaken in the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences. After a theoretical introduction to the idea of contentious politics and to theories of social conflicts, different applications to specific empirical issues will be presented in each session, with attention to the link to problems of sustainability and to the idea of polycrisis, as well as to methodological choices and practices. Themes will include environmentalist struggles, labour strife in global value chains, contesting border and migration regimes, feminist struggles, protests against austerity, anti-authoritarian struggles, peace movements, information and social media as contested terrains. The course will be delivered in blended mode.

M. Wieviorka, Social Conflict https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0011392113499487 Forchtner (2019), “Climate Change and the Far Right” Bosetti et al. (2025), “Green Backlash and Right-Wing Populism” Schwörer & Fernández-García (2024), “Climate Sceptics or Climate Nationalists?”