Donatella Della Porta is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute. She is on leave of absence from the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, where she is Professor of Political Science. Professor Della Porta received a Diplôme d ́Etudes Approfondies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales of Paris and a Ph.D in political and social sciences at the European University Institute in Florence. She has directed the DEMOS project (Democracy in Europe and the Mobilisation of Society), financed under the 6th Framework Program by the European Commission. She coordinated the Gruppo di Ricerca sull ́azione collettiva in Europa (GRACE) and has conducted research at Cornell University , Ithaca N.Y. and at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung. In 1990 she received a Career Development Award from the H.F. Guggenheim Foundation and in 1997 a Stipendium from the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. In 2011, she has received an Advanced Scholars grant from the European Research Council for a 5-year research project on ‘Mobilizing for Democracy’. In the same year, she was awarded the Mattei Dogan Prize for Political Sociology. Her main research interests include social movements, political violence, terrorism, corruption, police and policies of public order. On these issues she has conducted investigations in Italy, France, Germany and Spain. She has directed a project of comparative research on the control of public mass demonstrations in Europe and on the police in Italy. She is currently involved in several comparative projects on citizenship and social movements. She is also co-editor of the European Political Science Review. Professor Della Porta has been appointed to the Chair in Sociology and joined the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute on April 1, 2003. Her book Can Democracy be Saved?: Participation, Deliberation and Social Movements is forthcoming from Polity Press and can be found here:http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745664590#toc

Giampiero M. Gallo is Professor of Econometrics at the School of Economics of the University of Florence. At NYU Florence he is a part-time faculty member. He holds a laurea in economics and business from the University of Florence and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught at several American Universities, including: the University of Pennsylvania, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of California San Diego, and New York University. Gallo has also consulted in the economic, financial and regional development areas for the World Bank, Central Planning Bureau, CREST-INSEE, and Confindustria. He has published articles in major journals and his research interests include financial volatility modeling and forecasting and nonlinear time series.

Richard Sennett’s body of work comprises topics as diverse as urban studies, labor and capitalism, and culture. Since the 1960s, he has been exploring various modes in which cities shape the experience and personality of urban dwellers. His publications on the subject include Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization (1994), The Conscience of the Eye (La coscienza dell’occhio: progetto e vita sociale nelle città, 1991), and Nineteenth Century Cities (1969). He has also written extensively on the changes in the nature and perception of labor in contemporary society under the influence of capitalism. The consequences of this change were explored in The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (L’uomo flessibile. Le conseguenze del nuovo capitalismo sulla vita personale, 1998) and Hidden Injuries of Class, co-written with Jonathan Cobb. His most recent book, Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation (Insieme. Rituali, piaceri, politiche della collaborazione, 2012), which has inspired the title of this conference, suggests that contemporary society should improve its craft of cooperation to achieve prosperity and peace. Sennett has also published three novels. He is the Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and University Professor of the Humanities at New York University.