Biography

Jonas Van Vossole is a doctor in Political Science, and is part of the ECOSOC research group at Centro de Estudos Sociais at Coimbra University, Portugal. He detains a master degree in Political Science and a master in Complementary Economics, both from the University of Ghent. These are complemented with a post-graduate degree in advanced studies of democracy in the XXI century at the University of Coimbra. Jonas main research interest concern the study of democracy, social movements, social protests and critical political science, political economy and political ecology. His PhD research focusses on the influence of the euro crisis on democratic legitimacy in Southern Europe, and Portugal in particular. This research focusses on the role of social conflict and hegemony in the conceptualizations of democracy in the political and academic debates. He is a member of the ECPR standing group of South European Politics and of Democratic Innovations. His post-doctoral research project - Nature and Labour - aims to understand and propose Trade Union democracy as an alternative to the Democratic and Ecological crisis of Capitalism. It combines a continuation and further development of the critical approach in democratic theory adopted in my PhD research with perspectives of labour environmentalism. The approach will be inspired by reincorporating Rosa Luxemburgs' approach of imperialism as a perspective on the relation between Capital and Nature and her approach of the Mass strike regarding Trade Unions and prefigurative politics. Empirically the research will be based on selected industrial conflicts which involve ecological aspects and interviews with trade union leaders and activists. We expect to find a democratic discourse based on day-to-day struggles of the working class, which - apart from inspiring climate activism and potentializing wider alliances with environmental social movements - can also be seen as a form of prefigurative politics. The research thus aims to demonstrate a potential of Trade Unions to play the role of a historical subject for a just transition towards a sustainable post-capitalist society.