RC47 Mid-Term Conference 2026

How to Study Social Activism? Theory and Methods

📅 New abstract deadline: 20 March 2026
📍 Conference dates: 23–25 September 2026
📍 Location: University of Gdańsk, Poland

This conference represents the key RC47 scientific event of 2026 and an important opportunity to come together as a research community to reflect on the theoretical, methodological, and empirical challenges of studying contemporary activism.

A Time for Sociology

Declaration

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RC47 Webinar Series

Sociological Perspectives on the 2024/2025 Student Movement in Serbia

Friday, 13 March 2026 / 14:00 CET
Online event: https://zoom.us/j/94449435537

Two teams of sociologists from the University of Belgrade will present findings from recent research on the 2024/2025 student movement in Serbia.

Speakers: Aleksandra Marković · Dragan Stanojević · Smiljka Tomanović · Jelena Pešić

Encampments for Palestine and Academia

4:00 PM Beirut/Palestine (UTC+2) | 2:00 PM (UTC+0)
Online event

This session focuses on student-led encampments that have emerged across universities worldwide as spaces of solidarity, political learning, and the production of radical imaginaries. These encampments raise crucial questions about collective action, academic freedom, knowledge production, and the limits of institutional politics.

To participate, please register via the form below:

The Cultural Turn of the New Far Right: Symbolic Power, Affective Politics, and Everyday Extremism

University of the Basque Country (Bilbao, Spain), on 13–14 July 2026

Conceived as an intimate and discussion-oriented international meeting (with participation limited to 25 scholars), the conference seeks to explore the far right’s increasing turn toward cultural arenas as strategic sites of mobilisation. Rather than focusing solely on electoral dynamics or street-level protest, the event foregrounds how far-right actors mobilise symbolic repertoires, aesthetic forms, affective narratives, and metapolitical projects to influence collective identities and everyday imaginaries of nation, gender, tradition, and belonging.

Submit your abstract

RC47 Program Overview and Key Contributions at the 5th ISA Forum of Sociology

7 - 11 July 2025

#ISAforum25

Download the RC47 Program

RIDA47

Visit the RC47 Research Interests DAtabase to explore and connect with fellow researchers.

Visit RIDA47

RC47 Mid-Term Conference 2026

How to Study Social Activism? Theory and Methods

📅 New abstract deadline: 20 March 2026
📍 Conference dates: 23–25 September 2026
📍 Location: University of Gdańsk, Poland

This conference represents the key RC47 scientific event of 2026 and an important opportunity to come together as a research community to reflect on the theoretical, methodological, and empirical challenges of studying contemporary activism.

Online Tribute in Memory of Michael Burawoy

(1947 – 2025)

co-hosted by the International Sociological Association (ISA) and American Sociological Association is now available on ISAsociotube channel.

ISAsociotube channel

ISA Solidarity Statement with the Palestinian People

Events

5th International Conference on Social Solidarity Economy & the Commons (SSEC)

November 26-28, 2025 // Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal
Deadline: May 31, 2025

The conference will take place from 26 to 28 November 2025 at the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (Iscte) in Lisbon, Portugal.

The deadline for submitting contributions is 31 May 2025.

This year’s theme is: “Collapse and Regeneration: Community-led initiatives prefiguring liveable futures.”

DeZIM_talk: Whose democracy?

April 3, 2025 // 4-5 pm CET

Spearkers:
Emanuele Toscano (Marconi University)

Camilo Tamayo Gomez (president of RC48, University of Huddersfield (UK)

Ignacia Perugorria Frattini (researcher Basque Country University)

Pasha Dashtgard (American University and PERIL)

Fabian Virchow (Verbund der Forschungszentren für Rechtsextremismus- und Demokratieforschung, Hochschule Düsseldorf)

Cultural Backlash, Digital Extremism, and Transnational Networks: Unpacking the Global Surge of the New Far-Right

January 23-24, 2025
Bilbao

New Far Rights Global Research Network

RC47 + RC48

Inequalities, Youth, Democracy and the Pandemic

May 21, 2024
5 - 7 PM CET
RC Webinar Series

The book "Inequalities, Youth, Democracy and the Pandemic" edited by Simone Maddanu ed Emanuele Toscano brings together studies from various locations to examine the growing social problems that have been brought to the fore by the COVID-19 outbreak.

New Far Rights Global Research Network

Interdisciplinary collaborative research to unravel the global surge of the ‘New Far Right’
A community of social scientists from around the world putting their minds together to understand the causes, characteristics, and impacts of the ‘New Far Right’ in its multiple expressions.

RC48 + RC47

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International Sociological Association Research Committee on Social Classes and Social Movements (RC47) was founded as a Thematic Group in 1988. In 1990 it was recognised as a Working Group coordinated by Louis Maheu. The first board members included Carlo Carboni, Lucio Kowarick, Roland Roth and John Urry. Two years later, in 1992, the Working Group was promoted to a Research Committee with the same coordinator and board. Since then the boards have grown and have become increasingly internationalised. Geoffrey Pleyers, who served as RC47 president from 2014-2018 was elected as the president of the International Sociological Association in 2023. The first RC47 female president, Simin Fadaee was elected in 2023.

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