The seminar is a collaborative space designed to enhance ongoing research work through constructive discussion. The idea is to encourage the exchange of ideas in an environment of equality. Active participation and commitment to the standards we have given ourselves are key to generating an enriching and profitable debate for the development of research.
Next session
28 May 2026. (In the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology, UCM)
Chris Millora, The Intellectual Lives of Youth Activists: the politics of knowing in youth-led movements in shrinking democracies. Discussants: Paloma Elvira and Walter Haeusl.
The seminar follows the standards which appear in the margin. Papers will be circulated at least one week prior to the session via the mailing list.
If you want to attend the seminar, please fill in this form to be able to include you in the mailing list that we use to circulate the papers in advance of the session.
If you want to present your work in a session, you can contact the organizers: Valentin Clavé-Mercier, Inés Campillo y Daniel Martínez Lamas.
Authors are asked to send their work to the organisers in a document with simple interlining to avoid unnecessary paper waste.
PREVIOUS SESSIONS
2025-2026 academic year
23 April 2026.
Meri Mononen-Matias, Rearticulating Education from Below: Collective Action, Decolonial Epistemology, and the PTEO Counter-Hegemonic Curriculum in Oaxaca, Mexico. Discussants: Manuel Espinel and Omar Yampey.
19 March 2026.
Marina Dolz, Navigating intramovement diversity within the Spanish feminist movement. Discussants: María Martínez and Almudena de Linos.
26 February 2026.
Lucas Cowboy, Development of leadership in social movements for the right to housing: a study from the Union of Tenants of Madrid. Discussants: Eva Garcia and Aina Levesque.
29 January 2026.
Gabriela González, Between the street and the table: Youth, students and politics in the Uruguayan redemocratization. Discussants: Ana Natalucci and Enrique Maestu.
18 December 2025.
Mauricio Venegas, Socio-environmental conflict and water governance: The 2023 water crisis and the Neptune-Arazati project in the Santa Lucia river basin (Uruguay). Discussants: Gabriela González and Lucía Cobos.
17 November 2025.
Greta Rossi, What’s in a name? Fighting male, gendered, and patriarchal violence in Italy from 2007 until today. Discussants: Inés Campillo Poza and Paula Serna Arranz.
16 October 2025.
Diego Palacios Cerezales, Emotional police and the control of popular protest. Discussants: Sergio García García and Valentina González Alzola.
Course 2024-2025
29 May 2025.
Andrea Cesaroni, The discursive strategy of the EZLN before the Government of López Obrador in Mexico (2018-2024). Discussants: Jimena Ñáñez Ortiz and Daniel Martínez-Lamas.
24 April 2025.
Valentin Clavé-Mercier, Māori Responses to Covid-19: Collective Action and Prefigurative Politics. Discussants: Laura Galián and Mauricio Venegas.
27 March 2025.
Myriam Aarab, Class, precariousness and motivating effects among young activists. Discussants: Eduardo Romanos and Marina Dolz.
27 February 2025.
Miguel Leone Jouanny, Christian commitment, development and liberation among indigenous peoples in Latin America: An analysis of life stories and a conceptual outline. Discussants: Laura Calle Alzate and Andrea Cesaroni.
30 January 2025.
Lidia Yáñez Lagos, Solidarity in the face of repression: Memories, care and self-defense in the case of Movimineto Chile Awakened. Discussants: Jorge Resina and Maria Olympia Conceição.
19 December 2024.
Maria Olympia Conceição, Quilombolic voices: participation and gender in Brazilian institutions. Discussants: Paloma Caravantes and Cecilia Cienfuegos.
28 November 2024.
María Santiago Prieto, "While creating fear, they create this fabric of resistance": Autodefensa feminista frente a la violencia facilitada por tecnologías. Discussants: Concepción Fernández Villanueva and Paloma Castro.
31 October 2024.
Rubén Diéz, Mirroring Persistent Rival Discourses in Spain. What do large-scale mobilisations tell us about the country’s main political cleavage? Discussants: Graciela Merigó and Ramón Adell.
26 September 2024.
Angela Alonso, The mosaic protest cycle: State-social movements’ dynamics and the 2013 Brazilian case. Discussant: Erika Rodriguez.
Course 2023-2024
30 May 2024.
Anet Hernández Agrelo, Voices in resistance: an exploration of collective action in Cuba. Discussants: Valentin Clavé-Mercier and Araceli Serrano.
25 April 2024.
Alberto Arribas Lozano, Collective action and knowledge production: social movements as epistemic communities. Discussants: Gracia Trujillo Barbadillo and Laura Laosa Crespo.
21 March 2024.
John Postill, Follow the (de)polarisers: anthropological notes on the global culture wars. Discussants: María Santiago and César Rendueles.
22 February 2024.
Anna Lavizzari, Anti-gender movements and the radical right in Italy: A symbiotic relationship. Discussants: Laura Arranz and Cecilia Güemes.
25 January 2023.
Francisco José Fernández-Trujillo Moares, Mobilization of Riders of Spanish digital delivery platforms. Discussants: Carlota Carretero García and Pablo Martínez.
14 December 2023.
Alejandro Gonzalo Puyod, Activist careers in new generation environmentalism: the case of Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion. Discussants: Myriam Aarab and Igor Sádaba.
23 November 2023.
John Brown, Trajectories and legacies of outsider party-building: The rise and fall of Spain’s Podemos. Discussants: Sara Porras Sánchez and Gomer Betancor Nuez.
Course 2022-2023
25 May 2023.
Nerea Montejo López, Capitalism and Social Movements: Vacuums in the interregnum and opportunities. Discussants: Diego Parejo and Martín Portos.
20 April 2023.
Martín Portos, After the storm: Comparing the determinants of young people’s protest behaviour across South European contexts. Discussants: Daniel López Roche and Yolanda Agudo Arroyo.
30 March 2023.
Gomer Betancor, The influence of submerged networks on the spread of protest between cycles of mobilization. The case of networks prior to 15M in Madrid (2000-2011). Discussants: Francisco Fernández-Trujillo and Inés Campillo.
23 February 2023.
Daniel Martinez, What are memorialist movements? An approach to the Spanish case from the perspective of political strife. Discussants: Olmo Masa and José Luis Ledesma.
15 December 2022.
Marta Romero-Delgado, ‘Masculinity’ of women combatants or lack of conceptual tools?: On the impossibility of thinking beyond binarism in war contexts. Discussants: Alba Arenales and Almudena Cabezas González.
27 October 2022.
Diego Palacios Cerezales, ‘Have we heard the police radio!’ Respondent uses of state logistics in the Spanish transition. Discussants: Laura Fernández de Mosteyrin and Matías Viotti Barbalato.
Course 2021-2022
26 May 2022.
Alba Arenales, Spontaneity and riots: the case of the wider Irish Republican movement during ‘the Troubles’. Discussants: Marta Romero-Delgado and Andy Eric Castillo Patton.
STANDARDS OF THE SEMINAR
These standards are based on those used in The Politics and Protest Workshop, organised by Jim Jasper and John Krinsky at CUNY Graduate Center, which in turn followed those elaborated in their day by Charles Tilly. We thank colleagues at the Protest Institute in Berlin for rescuing them when they ceased to be available on Jim Jasper's website.
The standards have been translated and adapted for this seminar.
1. The primary objective of the seminar is to improve an ongoing research work. Participants should not show how intelligent they are by criticizing and humiliating the author.A good comment is not limited to pointing out a weak point of the work, but also suggests what could be done to improve it (constructive criticism).
2. The seminar treats everyone as equals. All the people are tutean with each other. Every regular member of the seminar is expected to present his or her work and comment on the work of others at each session. Expertise on the subject is useful, but not necessary. Often, in fact, the best comments and questions come from people who are not specialists in the field.
3. At the beginning of the session, the author is allowed, but not encouraged, to say a few sentences, usually about the context of the research. The author does not make a presentation to use since it is expected that all attendees have read the work before (it will be circulated at least one week in advance).
4. The session actually begins with moderately extensive reactions from two previously selected commentators, at least one of whom must not have a PhD. Ideally, these comments are brought in writing to be delivered to the author, so that the author does not have to worry about taking notes, making the discussion easier. After the two commentators have made their comments, the author is given time to respond.
5. Comments and questions are then opened. Members asked the moderator to speak by raising their hand with one finger up. The moderator keeps a list of names and calls them in the order in which they have been identified, except for the first two comments after the commentators, which must be raised by people without doctorates.
6. A second type of signal consists of raising the hand with two fingers upwards, indicating the desire to intervene to refer directly to the point under discussion at that time with a brief comment (maximum thirty seconds). Asking a question with two fingers does not alter the position that the intervener has in the regular queue to raise another comment or question.
7. Anyone who has not read the text can also participate in the seminar, but you cannot use it as an excuse to ask a question or comment that may have nothing to do with what the author is saying in his/her work.
8. In addition to oral comments, members are encouraged to submit written comments, which fulfil at least two different functions: communicate expertise, bibliography, etc., that would not be of general interest to the group and, by repeating questions or oral comments, free the author again from trying to take notes while responding to a barrage of very different questions and questions and provide him with a record of the discussion that will be useful to him later when he tries to remember what happened.
9. Repeating the first point, it is a firm rule that, however disoriented the work presented, the discussion is courteous, friendly, respectful and aimed at improving the work in question., instead of showing that the commentator is brilliant or that the author is misplaced or that his argument is dangerous (although all this may be true). Ideally, the author should be presented with several ways to continue working on his/her research, often divergent and even contradictory, that allow him/her to choose.
10. One of the keys to the success of the seminar is the continuity of the group of members whereas they have been socialised in the rules of the seminar; people who come for only one or two sessions depending on the topic are usually less useful in discussions.
11. After the seminar attendees are encouraged to continue the discussion taking something around the area (another key to success). The account is paid at cleavage between those who join, with the exception of the author, to whom you are invited.
English (UK)