Ignacia Perugorría
CEIC Co-director, GAIT Coordinator
Ignacia Perugorría is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of the Basque Country (EHU). She is Co-Director of the Collective Identity Research Center (CEIC) and Coordinator of the GAIT–Gizarte Aldaketa Ikerketa Taldea, a high-performance research group within the Basque University System, where she leads the research line on Social Mobilization, Civic Engagement, and Popular Culture (L2). She is also co-founder and co-coordinator of the New Far Rights Global Research Network, affiliated with the Research Committees RC47 (Social Movements and Social Classes) and RC48 (Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change) of the International Sociological Association (ISA).
She holds a PhD in Social Sciences from the EHU, an MA in Sociology from Rutgers University (USA), and a BA (Licenciatura) in Sociology from the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), all completed with the highest distinctions bestowed by each institution, including the Extraordinary Doctoral Prize (EHU) and the Extraordinary BA Prize (UBA).
She is a Fulbright Scholar and has received fellowships from the Institute of International Education (USA) and the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, as well as grants from the International Sociological Association (ISA), The British Academy, and the American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). She was also named “Basque Ambassador” by the Bizkaia Talent Program of the Provincial Council of Biscay.
During her time at Rutgers, she was elected Vice President and later President of the Graduate Student Association (GSA), the governing body representing nearly 15,000 master’s, doctoral, and postdoctoral students and more than 60 academic and cultural organizations. She also served as Graduate Workers Representative on the Executive Council of the Rutgers American Association of University Professors–American Federation of Teachers (AAUP-AFT), representing more than 1,800 teaching and research assistants within a union of over 3,000 faculty members, and was a Delegate at the AFT National Convention.
Ignacia has taught theory and methods courses at undergraduate and graduate levels in the United States, Latin America, and Spain. She is a faculty member in the official Master’s and Doctoral Programs in Models and Areas in Social Science Research (MAICS, EHU), as well as in the International Master’s in Sociology of Law at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Oñati (EHU–ISA). Since 2025, she has also served as Coordinator of the Research Methods and Methodology Area in the undergraduate degrees in Sociology and in Political Science and Public Administration at EHU. She is currently supervising two doctoral dissertations (MAICS) and three Master’s Theses (Oñati), and has previously supervised four additional Master’s Theses (Oñati), all graded “Outstanding,” with two awarded the André-Jean Arnaud Prize for the best Oñati thesis.
She has participated in more than 20 research projects in Argentina, the United States, and Europe. A member of GAIT and CEIC since 2013, she is currently a researcher on the following projects: Socioecos (MINECO, PID2021-126611NB-I00; PI: Tejerina); HarilkAI. Prototyping AI Uses in Communication and Social Science Research (EHU Groups; PIs: Amezaga and Apodaka); and the Network for the Study of Religious Diversity (REDIR, RED2024-153994-T, PI: Griera).
Her research interests lie at the intersection of social movement studies, political sociology and the sociology of culture, with a multi-method approach combining quantitative and qualitative techniques, visual ethnography, and social network analysis. Ignacia’s most relevant publications can be found in Politics and Religion, Current Sociology, Revista Española de Sociología (RES), Revista Internacional de Sociología (RIS), Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas (REIS), Política y Sociedad, Recerca Revista de Pensament i Anàlisi, and Revista de Estudios Sociales. She has also co-edited a special issue in Current Sociology, and a volume in The Mobilization Series on Social Movements, Protest, and Culture, jointly published by Routledge and Mobilization: An International Quarterly, the leading scientific journal in the field of contentious politics.
She is currently working on:
- Her manuscript The Politics of Celebration. Festive Networks, Intersectional Activisms, and Ephemeral Urban Commons in Bilbao, accepted for publication in Routledge-Mobilization: An International Quarterly (2026)
- A co-edited special issue titled “The Cultural Turn of the Far Right: Symbolic Power, Affective Politics and Everyday Extremism,” accepted for publication in the European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology (EJCPS, 2027)
- A co-edited special issue titled “New Horizons in the Social Dimensions of Climate Change, Climate Emergency, and Socio-Ecological Practices,” accepted for publication in Current Sociology (2027)
- A co-edited volume titled Neoconservative Opposition to Moral Politics in Spain: Five Decades of Anti-Rights Mobilization (1978–2025), under review at the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS), Academia Series