University of Aberdeen

Faculty Member, Department of Sociology

Lecturer

University of Aberdeen

About

Cristina Flesher Fominaya has an MA and PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA summa cum laude in International Relations from the University of Minnesota. She has won numerous international scholarships and prizes including the National Science Foundation Fellowship, the German Marshall Fellowship and the Leo Lowenthal Prize for Outstanding Paper in Culture and Critical Theory awarded by the University of California, Berkeley. She worked as Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Political Science in the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. She currently works as Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Aberdeen.
Her long term interest in alternative social movements has led to ethnographic research on the Spanish Green Parties, the British Anti-Roads Movement, and Anti-globalization Networks in western Europe. She has a particular interest in autonomous social movement groups, and the possibilities and challenges of autonomous movement. Her work analyzes, among other things, the dynamics of participatory democracy within movement groups, collective identity formation, and tensions within the Global Justice Movement between institutional left and autonomous actors. Dr. Flesher Fominaya also studies the impact of ICTs on social movement groups, highlighting some of the more negative or challenging aspects of their use.

Recent publications include  “The Madrid bombings and popular protest: misinformation, counterinformation, mobilisation and elections after ‘11-M’” Contemporary Social Science Vol. 6, 3, 2011, pp. 1–19; “Defining the victims of terrorism: competing frames around victim compensation and commemoration post 9/11 New York City and 3/11, Madrid” in Karatzogianni, A: (ed) Violence and War in the Media: Five Disciplinary Lenses, (Media, War and Security Series) London and New York: Routledge, 2012, ISBN-13: 978-0415665230;
"Collective Identity in Social Movements: Central Concepts and Debates", Sociology Compass, Vol 4, 6, 2010, pp.393-404; “Creating Cohesion from Diversity: The Challenge of Collective Identity Formation in the Global Justice Movement”, Sociological Inquiry, Vol 80, 3, 2010, pp. 377-404; “Autonomous Movement and the Institutional Left: Two Approaches in Tension in Madrid's Anti-globalization Network”, in John Karamichas (ed.) New and Alternative Social Movements in Spain: Identity, the Left and Globalising Processes, South European Society & Politics, Vol. 12, 3, 2007;  “The Role of Humour in the Process of Collective Identity Formation in Autonomous Social Movement Groups in Contemporary Madrid.” International Review of Social History, Humour and Social Protest, 52, 2007, pp.243-258; and “Nuevas tecnologías de la comunicación, democracia y participación política” in Victor Perez Díaz (coord) Mediterráneo Económico, Vol 14: Modernidad, crisis y globalización: problemas de política y cultura, 2008, pp. 229-242. (with Roberto Garvía). 

Research in progress includes analysis of the 13-M Madrid protests following the 11-M bombings in 2004, and a comparative study of commemoration of victims of terrorism in Madrid and New York following the 11M and S11 terrorist attacks.

Dr. Flesher Fominaya is one of the founders of Interface Journal , an academic/activist journal for and about social movements and co-edits (with Laurence Cox) the Western Europe and Global Movements sections of the journal.
She is founding co-chair of the Council for European Studies Social Movements Research Network.

She is also a member of the editorial board of Sociological Research Online.

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