Police infiltration of protest

Raphael Schlembach: How much will the public be told about Britain’s undercover police spying on political activists? Lord Justice Pitchford, who chairs the public inquiry into undercover policing, is due to make his ruling on the disclosure of evidence and protection of identity in …

Formal modelling, diffusion and radicalism?

This blog post reviews Törnberg & Törnberg’s recent paper in SMS, extending the analysis to ‘echo chambers’ and raising the possibility of competitive diffusion processes.

Report on Digital Activism Conference

What is ‘digital activism’? Towards the end of a full day conference discussing the social impact of new technologies, one attendee asked the panel…

Some Trends in Social Movement Scholarship over Four Decades

Kevin Gillan presents some trends in journal publishing on social movements, showing that despite the obvious regular themes in scholarship there is a great deal of diversity in work on social movements being published in a wide range of forums…

movements@manchester is a group of researchers who share an interest in social movements, protest, demonstrations, everyday politics and broadly speaking social change. We come from a range of social science backgrounds and are engaged in research in various contexts of the global North and South and on a range of topics. Our theoretical perspectives broadly but not exclusively draws on political, public and critical sociology. We run a monthly reading group and regularly organise seminars and events. We also organise the Alternative Futures and Popular Protests (AFPP) annual conference, which is an international, cross-disciplinary conference on social movements, protest and cognate topics. It draws participants from over 60 countries and various disciplines and makes for a friendly meeting ground between academia and activism. Apart from being a research group, our aim is to engage with the wider public as much as possible and therefore, we are always interested in making connections with local activists and community groups.

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