Researching social movements and communities in struggle: a call for papers

To celebrate the publication of the Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Social Movements (see the introduction here) you are invited to take part in a day conference in Maynooth with the four editors:

• Anna Szolucha (now Jagiellonian University, Kraków) did her PhD in Maynooth on real democracy in Occupy Dublin (where she was part of the facilitation team) and Oakland, and has since done community-based research on energy and democracy around fracking in England and Poland. She now leads the ARIES project, looking at how people imagine and live with space travel around the world.
• Alberto Arribas Lozano (now Complutense University, Madrid) has been involved in projects developing dialogues between academic research and social movements in Spain, South Africa and Peru (as part of a Maynooth-based project collaborating with PRATEC, an indigenous Andean education network, around buen vivir and peasant knowledge). Alberto has published widely about social movements as knowledge producers.
• Sutapa Chattopadhyay (St Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia) is a radical geographer working in women’s and gender studies and migration studies. Sutapa’s research focusses on an intersectional analysis of forced dispossessions, social transformations, anti-colonial movements, migrant autonomy and Indigeneity through the voices of the marginalised in India, Italy and globally.
• Laurence Cox (Sociology, Maynooth) works with movements to develop their own practice. He has published over a dozen books on social movements, Marxism, revolutions and the history of Buddhism and Ireland. Laurence is a founding editor of Interface and currently involved with the Movement Learning Catalyst, supporting strategic activist training across Europe. If you would like to join us, please email laurence.cox@mu.ie with a title and 200-word abstract by May 1st.

We welcome activist contributions and papers from people who are just starting their research as well as more formal or academic ones – the point is to have a good day’s discussion with people who care about understanding movements better, and about making a better world.

The event is free and all are welcome. We are very grateful to the Dept of Sociology which is providing lunch and coffee for the event.