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della Porta, Donatella
Corresponding Fellows
Elected: 2023
Email: donatella.dellaporta [@] sns.it
Profile
Prof. ord. di Scienza Politica nella Scuola Normale Superiore.
Donatella della Porta has a very international profile, having studied and worked in major social science institutions, all over the world. As for her formation, after a BA at the University of Catania, she received in 1981 a Diplôme d'Etudes Approfondies (DEA) [MA], at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France (under the supervision of Alain Touraine) and in 1987 a Ph.D. at European University Institute (under the supervision of Philippe C. Schmitter). During her postdoctoral studies at the European University Institute, she worked with the late Alessandro Pizzorno, until she moved to the Wissenschaftszentume Berlin fuer Social Forshung, to participate, between 1988 and 1993, to the establishment of the department on « Social Movements and the Public Sphere ».
Back to Italy in 1993, she has been professor of Political Science at the University of Florence. She then moved to the European University Institute in 2003 as Professor of Sociology and Director of graduate studies. Since 2015, she is Professor of Political Science at the Scuola Normale Superiore. At those three institutions, she has supervised about 100 PhD students, coming from more than thirty countries and working, among others, on democratization, social movements, civil society, migration, peace, democratization, political sociology, political science, international relations. political theory.
During her career, she has received prestigeous international prizes and recognitions such as the Forschungspreise of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, awarded in November 2021, for life achievements as a highly prominent international scholar; the Mattei Dogan Prize, awarded in 2011, for distinguished achievements in the field of political sociology, a Research grant of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung in 2012, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Career Development Award in 1990. In 2012 she has been nominated member of the European Academy in 2012. She has also been a member of the General Prize Committee of the Balzan Foundation. In 2022, she has been awarded a Research Prise from the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. In the same year, she has been nominated International Honorary Member of the Americal Academy of Arts and Sciences. She holds PhD Honoris Causa from the Universities of Gotenborg, Bucharest, Lausanne, Jyvaskyla, Peloponneso and Cyprus.
As a committed found raiser for academic research, she has received, among others, an Advanced Scholars Grant on “Mobilizing for democracy” of the European Research Council between 2011 and 2016 (Euros 1 800 000). She has been the Director of the Research Project on “Democracy in Europe and the mobilization of the society, financed by the European Commission in 2003-2006 (Euros 1 000 000) and participated as principal investigator in other four major international research consortia financed by the European Commission. In 2021, she has been awarded a major grant for a research on solidarity initiatives from the Volkswagen Stiftung.
All along her life, Donatella Della Porta has engaged in institution building. Since 2015 and until 2021, she has been the Founding Dean of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Scuola Normale Superiore. Located in Florence, the Faculty now hosts two PhD programs, one on Political Science and Sociology (that she directs since 2015) and one in Transnational Governance, with a faculty of 15 members, about 60 PhD students and about 12 post-docs. At the SNS, she is also the Director of the Centre on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos), which she founded in 2012 at European University Institute and, since November 2015, moved at Scuola normale superior in Firenze. She has also been the founding co-editor of the major journal European Political Science Review. Highly read and cited (Citations Google Scholar in July 2023: 51000 ca.; h-index 97), she has influenced the international academic debates, among others on democracy and democratization, social movements, political violence, local governments, corruption, the police and protest policing. The author, co-author or editor of about 100 books, she has published with main international academic presses.