Between October and December Kersti stayed as a guest research fellow with the Centre on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS) of the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, Italy. She used the time at COSMOS to investigate ways forward to strengthen the relationship between Communication for Development and Social Movement research. Next to her focus on the intersection of communication and social movement studies she also visited various courses. Among others, she explored the potential of contemporary work on the intersection of democracy and social movements to inform her work on the open governance movement and civic tech activism in particular.

Kersti will return to Florence in Spring for her research and as a speaker in the workshop “Protest Media Ecologies: Communicative Affordances for Social Change in the Digital Era”.