About me
I am a Professor of Political Sociology at the Department of Sociology II of the National University of Distance Education (UNED) in Madrid.
Previously, I was a Senior Research-Professor at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and the National University of San Martín (UNSAM) in Buenos Aires, a Ramón y Cajal Fellow at the UNED, a Humboldt Senior Fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg, and a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research (CIPR) at Tulane University in New Orleans.
I hold a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Buenos Aires, a Master in Research and a Doctoral degree in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence.
I served as a co-convenor of the hub “New Patterns of Mobilization for- and against- Democracy” (a joint effort of the CEU Democracy Institute and the University of Los Andes in Bogotá), as a member of the Steering Committee of the Participation and Mobilization Standing Group of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), and participated at Brown University’s International Advanced Research Institutes (BIARI).
Research agenda
I am currently working on the political economy of social movements, the analysis of strategies of social movements inside and outside parliaments, and the comparative-historical analysis of social movements in Latin America and Africa. My research interests focus on the relational and historical analysis of strategy making, theorizing the nexus between the pace of long-term historical processes and the strategies and expectations of the actors involved in the dynamics of social change.
In my book The Poor’s Struggle for Political Incorporation (Cambridge University Press) I propose a theory for analyzing the popular sectors’ quest for incorporation as citizens and wage-earners. This book opened a new debate on the analysis of the political economy of Latin America, originating the co-edited volume Reshaping the Political Arena in Latin America: From Resisting Neoliberalism to the Second Incorporation (University of Pittsburgh Press) to further apply my thesis of the second wave of incorporation in Latin America.
In addition, I am the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Social Movements (Oxford University Press), and I co-edited Social Movement Dynamics: New Perspectives on Theory and Research from Latin America (Routledge). Both volumes provide the most complete review of the Latin American production on social movement studies.
In Spanish, I am the author of Democracia y movimientos sociales (Instituto Nacional Electoral), and regarding youth political participation, I wrote La participación de las juventudes hoy: la condición juvenil y la redefinición del involucramiento político y social (Prometeo Editorial).
I am advisory editor of The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements (Wiley, 2nd edition), and a member of the international academic committees of the Project MOBILISE (University of Manchester) and the INCT Participa Research Network (CAPES-Universidade de São Paulo).
My work has been published in Arabic, Turkish, French, Portuguese, Spanish and English, and in journals such as Studies in Comparative International Development, International Political Science Review, Development and Change, International Sociology, Third World Quarterly, Social Movement Studies, Mobilization, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Latin American Politics and Society, Latin American Perspectives, Bulletin of Latin American Research, among others.
Guest lectureships and visiting professor
I have been Visiting Professor at the Centre on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS) of the Scuola Normale Superiore (Florence), Queen Mary University of London, the American University in Cairo, Singapore Management University and the Università degli studi di Pisa, and Visiting Scholar at New York University and the Universidade de Brasília.
In these universities and in many others, I have been invited to give guest lectures on social movements, Latin American politics, strategic analysis and comparative historical analysis in all continents: the WZB in Berlin, the London School of Economics (LSE), Sciences Po (Paris), the University of Glasgow, the Universidad de Salamanca, Newcastle University, Scuola Normale Superiore (Florence), the Università degli studi di Trento, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Göteborgs universitet, Brown University, the University of Pittsburgh, Tulane University, the American University in Cairo, Western Cape University, Singapore Management University, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, the Universidad Nacional de San Martín and the Universidad de Buenos Aires.
Transfer of knowledge
As an expert I have been interviewed by different media outlets and have given speeches at the Commission for Social Development of the United Nations (New York), the Euro-Latin American Assembly of the European Parliament (Brussels), the Panel of Eminent Persons on Civil Society and United Nations Relationships – Latin American Regional Consultation Meeting (Rio de Janeiro), the National Electoral Institute (INE) of Mexico and the Students’ Forum 2000 (Prague), among others.
Prior to my work in academia I worked with Oxfam Australia, the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations, Vientos del Sur NGO, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the United Nations Information Center for Argentina and Uruguay, among others.
I am fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and English.
Contact information
Prof. Federico M. Rossi 