Introduction
Want to access the latest research into social change and activism? We’ve rounded up some of the best sources of social movement research around the world, including research hubs, networks, academic journals, blogs and magazines. Here you’ll find the latest insights into how social change happens, political analysis, and tips for evidence-based advocacy.
Australia
Advocacy Research Network
Advocacy Research Network is a network of researchers in Australia providing targeted intelligence to help advocacy organisations build stronger campaigns and achieve their goals. Some of their services include: target research, community mapping, strategic intelligence, policy & impact analysis, data analysis and monitoring, and movement research.
Australian Policy Online – See Subjects – Activism and Protests Movements
APO is an open access evidence platform – making public policy research and resources accessible and useable.
You can narrow results to “activism” and “protest movements” to find relevant research and reporting.
Note that you’ll find reports from a range of sources here, be sure to check and acknowledge the source.
The Commons Social Change Library
An online library for the change makers of the world and for those interested in social change, activism, advocacy and justice. See the Research & Archiving topic and the Research tag.
The Conversation – Articles on Social Movements
The Conversation Australia and New Zealand publishes research and news stories, authored by academics with professional journalist editors to produce accessible research-informed articles and outputs.
You can filter for articles on “social movements”.
Environmental Movement Research Hub
The Oceanian environmental movement research hub is engaged in a range of projects aiming to support evidence based successful activism. We foster collaboration and information sharing across activists and researchers to play our part in creating positive social change. Our projects include one of the world’s first citizen science projects focused on environmental activism. Our work is focused on the mechanisms by which social and environmental change can be most rapidly and effectively achieved.
The Tally Room (electoral data and analysis)
A blog by Ben Raue providing Australian electoral data and analysis.
UK
Campaign Lab
Campaign Lab is a collaborative network of progressive campaigners, data scientists, technologists and researchers. They test ideas, build practical tools, and generate evidence to better understand what drives impact on the ground.
Hive Mind
Hive Mind help civil society actors from around the world build their digital resilience. They facilitate an international community of practice where activists and organizations can share expertise, exchange best practices, and address local challenges with new skills and knowledge.
James Ozden – Understanding Social Change
A substack from James Ozden on social movements, movement strategy, effective altruism and “other things related to making the world a better place”.
Natasha Adams – thinking, doing, changing
A blog from Natasha Adams, a UK-based movement researcher and strategist with 20+ years expertise on how social change happens.
Sheila McKechnie Foundation
The Sheila McKechnie Foundation aims to strengthen campaigning by championing excellence and building a connected, resilient community of changemakers. They connect: bring people together to build relationships and shared purpose; support: equip campaigners with skills, confidence and tools; champion: celebrate success and amplify impact.
Social Change Lab
Social Change Lab studies social movements to understand what makes them effective — and shares what we learn with activists, researchers, funders, and the public. Our peer-reviewed research builds a clearer, evidence-based picture of how social change happens.
Europe
Cosmos: The Centre on Social Movement Studies (Italy)
The Centre on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos) is a network based at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence. It focuses on social movements as part of broader contentious politics. It promotes theoretically-driven empirical analyses on forms, dimensions, causes and impacts of social movements, in established democracies as well as authoritarian regimes. Particular attention is given to social movements as promoters of democratization processes.
European Democracy Hub
The European Democracy Hub is an analytical centre that brings together expertise on democracy. The Hub explores the challenges affecting democratic politics in an effort to support democratic governance in Europe and around the world. The European Democracy Hub is a joint initiative of Carnegie Europe and European Partnership for Democracy.
Institute for Protest and Social Movements Research (Germany)
Over 200 researchers work together at the ipb. They conduct joint research on current and past protests. They exchange ideas in working groups, workshops, and conferences. And they disseminate this knowledge to the public.
Social Movements Council for European Studies Research Network Newsletters
This international multidisciplinary research network, established in May 2011, now comprises over 200 scholars in over 25 countries and 20 disciplines. With a directory of researchers studying social movements in Europe, circulation of announcements related to the field and a series of research initiatives, the network is a lively online presence, free to everyone working in the area
US
Climate Advocacy Lab
The Climate Advocacy Lab’s research program produces actionable insights that help organizations build power and win. Over the past eight years, we have worked with dozens of climate, clean energy, and climate justice organizations to help answer the community’s biggest questions. We are able to draw from our in-house research knowledge, as well as the considerable expertise of our membership of social scientists, organizers, and field researchers. Through our research, we have helped advocates develop more effective public engagement campaigns, better connect with target audiences, and save on valuable resources like money and staff time.
Harvard Kennedy School – Research on Advocacy and Social Movements
Harvard Kennedy School employs several academics with a focus on advocacy and social movements, including Erica Chenoweth, Marshall Ganz and Liz McKenna.
The Horizons Project’s Substack
The Horizons Project team act as organizers, conveners, facilitators, and sense-makers, striving to impact the ecosystem of social change throughout the country.
Nonviolent Action Lab at Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard University
The Nonviolent Action Lab is an innovation hub for research on advancing democracy worldwide through civil resistance. The Lab produces and disseminates up-to-date knowledge on nonviolent action, how it works, global trends in success and failure, trends in political violence and state repression, and analysis of these trends.
P3 Lab
The P3 Lab is a multi-disciplinary research lab based at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. We are committed to learning and shared inquiry that meets the twin goals of relevance and rigor, and pursues a world where people’s participation in public life across race and class is possible, probable, and powerful. We seek to simultaneously push the frontiers of strategic thinking in organizing and knowledge-building in academic scholarship in everything we do. P3 Lab is directed by Hahrie Han and Jane Booth-Tobin.
Global
Beautiful Trouble
A book, strategy card deck, online toolbox and creative campaign incubator. An international network of artist-activist-trainers helping grassroots movements become more creative and effective.
Center for Nonviolent Conflict Research
CNCR focuses on how ordinary people wage nonviolent conflict to win rights, freedom and justice. We develop and share knowledge and resources on civil resistance with interested recipients throughout the world. This includes activists, scholars, educators, nongovernmental organizations, media professionals, and members of the policy community. CNCR includes resources from around the world and in a wide range of languages.
Google Scholar articles on “social movements”
Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes scholarly literature.
Mob Lab
MobLab Collective empowers and strengthens progressive movements by providing capacity-building support and fostering strategic collaborations. We work alongside civil society organisations to build power, drive systems change, and amplify the voices of communities facing injustice and oppression through people-centred and powered campaigns.
Nonviolence News Research Archive
To support scholars, researchers, students, and activists, we’re making the collection of news articles that inspire our weekly articles available in the Nonviolence News Research Archive. Week by week, you can explore the 30-50 stories of nonviolence in action around the world. Click through to the original source articles and longer posts.
Waging Nonviolence
Waging Nonviolence is a nonprofit media organization dedicated to providing original reporting and expert analysis of social movements around the world.
Tectonica Organising Network newsletter
We spend hours curating the best content on digital organising and strategies so we can share it with you, our community of progressive change-makers.
Journals & Magazines
Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest
Contention is dedicated to research on social protest, collective action and contentious politics. As a multidisciplinary journal, Contention’s mission is to bridge scholarly divides and promote knowledge exchange across a diverse audience of scholars in the social sciences and humanities. The journal publishes articles by academics and practitioners on topics spanning the full range of social and political contention.
Convergence: A Magazine for Radical Insights (US)
Convergence is a magazine for radical insights. We work with organizers and activists on the frontlines of today’s most pressing struggles to produce articles, videos and podcasts that sharpen our collective practice by lifting up stories from the grassroots and making space for reflection and study.
Interface: A Journal for and about Social Movements
Interface: A Journal for and about Social Movements is an open-access, peer-reviewed online journal bringing together activists from different movements and different countries, researchers working with movements, and engaged academics from different disciplines.
European Alternative Journal (Europe)
The EA journal is a space to imagine alternatives beyond the nation-state. It contains think-pieces, articles, artistic and cultural contribtions, podcasts, videos and more on a broad range of topics and themes spanning democracy, culture, equality, decolonisation, social movement organising and more.
Global Dialogue: Magazine of the International Sociological Association
Global Dialogue is the open-access online magazine of the International Sociological Association, striving to offer truly global and public sociology. The magazine contains short and accessible articles aimed at sociologists and the wider public. It brings visions, accounts and analyses of pressing issues from different corners of the world, discussions on theoretical approaches, and interviews with sociologists about the perspectives for our discipline. It offers a sociological lens on current world events, underlining our continuing relevance to public debates. See articles about “movements”.
Journal of Resistance Studies
The Journal of Resistance Studies is an international, interdisciplinary and peer- reviewed scientific journal that explores unarmed resistance. The focus is on critical understandings of resistance strategies, discourses, tactics, effects, causes, contexts and experiences. Our aim is to advance an understanding of how resistance might undermine repression, injustices and domination of any kind, as well as how resistance might nurture autonomous subjectivity, as e.g. constructive work, alternative communities, oppositional ways of thinking. We invite journal articles or book reviews and debate contributions.
Mobilization: An International Quarterly
“Mobilization is the leading research review of social movements, protests, and contentious politics. It advances the study of these phenomena by providing a forum to refine and innovate methodologies, theories, and concepts across the social science disciplines. Recognizing the globalization of our research community and of the movements we study, our official name is Mobilization: An International Quarterly”
Moving the Social: Journal of Social History and the History of Social Movements
Moving the Social: Journal of Social History and the History of Social Movements is an international and peer-reviewed journal rooted in the discipline of history but with an explicit interest in work produced on social affairs and social movements by other disciplines, in particular the social sciences, geography, anthropology and ethnology.
Social Movement Studies
Social Movement Studies is an international and inter-disciplinary journal providing a forum for academic debate and analysis of extra-parliamentary political, cultural and social movements throughout the world.
Conferences and Trainings
Progress (Australian Progress)
Progress is an initiative of Australian Progress, and brings together the country’s boldest change-makers, organisers and campaigners to have big conversations, share skills, and reimagine what’s possible. You can find summaries and learnings from past Progress conferences on the Commons Library here.
FWD+Organise (Australian Progress)
FWD+Organise is an initiative of Australian Progress, convening Australia’s leading community organisers and digital campaigners. The conference focuses on sharing practical skills, learning innovative approaches to advocacy, and building lasting collaborations to win systemic change. You can find summaries and learnings from past FWD+Organise conferences on the Commons Library here.
Nerdy Movement Study Group (Powerlabs)
Nerdy Movement isn’t “organizing 101.” It is a comprehensive, six-week program for experienced organizers to learn evidence-based approaches for recruiting new members, increasing their commitment and capability to lead, and building strong member teams that learn and adapt to changing conditions.
“Throughout Nerdy Movement, we read the research, consult the case studies, and roll up our sleeves in practice to replace ineffective, outdated, harmful methods with what’s needed now for individuals and teams to do their best work and thrive.”
Netroots Nation
Netroots Nation is a non-profit organization that provides trainings, resources and connection opportunities to help progressive activists create a more progressive and just world. Since 2006, Netroots Nation has hosted the largest annual conference for progressives in the USA, drawing up to 4,000 attendees. The annual event brings together diverse voices from around the country and beyond.
Databases
Global Nonviolent Action Database
This database provides free access to information about hundreds of cases of nonviolent action for learning and for citizen action. We research campaigns that have reached a point of completion. The cases are drawn from all continents and most countries.
Tactics4Change Case Studies
The Tactics4Change interactive website provides free access to information about more than 400 hundred cases of nonviolent dilemma actions, from every continent, and over 100 countries. This dataset of creative tactics, designed to put opponents in a lose-lose position, offers opportunities for further learning for students, scholars, and activists. The database is a collaborative project between the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) and faculty from the Pennsylvania State University. Learn more about the database.
Global Atlas of Environmental Justice
The Global Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas) documents and catalogues social conflicts around environmental issues. It is an online interactive platform coordinated and managed by a team of researchers and activists. The content and data are the result of the work of hundreds of collaborators across the world who tell their own stories of resistance or write about what they witness.
Know a source we’ve missed? Let us know via the contact form.
Explore further
- “Research” tag on Commons Library
- Sharing Research and Reports via the Commons Library
- Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Social Movements
- Finding the Needle in the Haystack: Internet Research Tips
- Build More Powerful Campaigns with Social Science
- Beyond Extractivism in Research with Communities and Movements
- How do we Research and Understand Popular Struggles?
