In this talk I will first provide a very brief outline of my research trajectory before presenting an overview and some findings from my Marie Sklodowska Curie research project: Contentious Politics in an Age of Austerity: Comparing Ireland and Spain. The central puzzle motivating this research was to explore the very different levels of contention and mobilization in the two cases despite being similarly affected by the crisis and by austerity policies. I will then explore the relationship between social movements and public policy, and how my research into anti-austerity and pro-democracy movements offers important insights into the challenges and opportunties faced by groups and policymakers seeking "purpose beyond power," arguing that social movements serve as a means of diagnosing dysfunctions in the democratic process, challenge public norms and how these reflect and distribute power in society, and are a sine qua non for democracy in liberal states.
Cristina Flesher Fominaya is a Senior Lecturer (associate professor) at the University of Aberdeen, and an internationally recognized expert in social movements. From September 2013-2015 she was Senior Marie Curie Fellow at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth conducting a two-year research project on anti-austerity mobilizations in Ireland and Spain. She is a founding editor of Interface Journal, an editor of Social Movement Studies, and is founding co-chair of the Council for European Studies Research Network on European Social Movements. Her latest book is Social Movements and Globalization: How protests, occupations and uprisings are changing the world, available from Palgrave Macmillan.