What does it mean to be an active citizen today, and how do new forms of political agency take shape? At a moment when street protests, ecological movements, and struggles for reproductive rights are once again raising the question of what it means to be a political subject, this talk offers a framework for thinking through contemporary forms of activism. Pleyers argues that new political subjectivities do not emerge only in key historical moments, but in everyday life, through the construction of selfhood and encounters with others.

Geoffrey Pleyers is an FNRS Research Director and Professor of Sociology at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. He is the current President of the International Sociological Association. He holds a PhD from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris, 2006) and was recently awarded a Doctorate Honoris Causa by the National University Pedro Ruiz and the College of Sociologists of Peru. His research focuses on global sociology, social movements, youth activism and Latin America. He is the author of four books including “Alter-Globalization. Becoming Actors in the Global Age” (Polity, 2011) and “El cambio nunca es lineal” (“Change is never linear”, in Spanish, CLACSO, 2024). His recent articles in English include What sociology can do in wartime. The resilience and dynamism of Ukrainian sociologists (International Sociology, 2026); “For a global sociology of social movements. Beyond methodological globalism and extractivism” (Globalizations, 2024), and “The Chilean awakening in a global decade of social movements”.