Key research themes
1. How do youth-led socialist movements emerge and sustain political engagement across generations and socio-political contexts?
This theme focuses on the origins, trajectories, and persistence of socialist-aligned youth and student movements through various historical and cultural moments. Research in this area illuminates how youth actors organize against neoliberal, austerity, and authoritarian conditions, maintaining political continuity and adapting ideologies across generational divides. Understanding these dynamics is crucial to grasping the role of youth as catalysts in broader socialist and progressive social change.
2. What theoretical frameworks best explain the organization, agency, and evolution of socialist youth movements and their links to broader political processes?
This area probes the social science theories and conceptual tools used to analyze socialist youth movements, drawing from social movement theory, Open Marxism, and organizational studies. It addresses how these movements negotiate class dynamics, inter-organizational relations, political opportunity structures, and ideological formation, providing insight into the mechanisms shaping movement cohesion, recruitment, and impact on democratic and party politics.
3. How do socialist youth movements contribute to social education, identity formation, and the cultivation of socialist consciousness through cultural and spatial practices?
This research theme investigates the role of youth movements as sites of political learning, identity construction, and cultural production within socialist and leftist contexts. It also examines how visual culture, collective memory, and youth press design contribute to perpetuating socialist ideals and political engagement. The spatial and cultural dimensions illuminate mechanisms through which youth embed socialist values domestically and transnationally.