Geoffrey Pleyers, FNRS Senior Research Associate at UCLouvain, within the Centre de recherche Démocratie, Institutions, Subjectivité (CriDIS), Doctor in Sociology from ULiège, takes over the presidency of ISA, the International Sociological Association, the discipline's largest association. Geoffrey Pleyers completed his doctorate (2002-2006) in sociology at ULiège under the supervision of Marc Poncelet, within the center he directed (Pôle Sud), which contributed to its international opening.
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he International Sociological Association (ISA) is the leading association for the discipline of sociology. The association was founded by UNESCO in 1947. Today it brings together 82 national sociology associations as well as the leading regional and linguistic associations (such as the European Sociology Association, the International Association of French-speaking Sociologists, the Latin American Sociology Association, etc.). It is organised into 67 thematic research committees (on the sociology of the family, religions, participation, social movements, etc.). It has 7,000 paid-up members, but has a much wider reach through the activities of its various research committees and its social networks, which have a large following in the international community of social science researchers (it has more than 40,000 followers on Twitter, for example). The ISA also publishes two of the most important scientific journals in sociology (International Sociology and Current Sociology) and a journal with a broader readership that is translated into 17 languages (Global Dialogue).
Because of the size of the association and the length of the mandate (4 years, whereas the presidency of the leading national or regional associations is generally limited to one or two years), the presidency of the ISA makes it possible to influence certain aspects of the discipline. One of the ISA's main contributions is to promote better integration of sociologists from the southern hemisphere to foster a 'global dialogue' and to rethink sociology and its contributions by integrating Western contributions and those from different world regions. Geoffrey Pleyers sets out his perspective in this article.
Among the other projects he would like to strengthen, support for sociologists who are victims of authoritarian state repression is particularly close to his heart, both to defend these courageous colleagues and because the defence of critical sociology is an integral part of the defence of democracy. Like other international associations, it also wants to adapt to a world where the Internet offers new opportunities for collaboration and the dissemination of knowledge, without replacing face-to-face meetings and conferences. More generally, the ISA is an extraordinary platform for bringing together analysis, research and experience from different continents to help tackle some of the major challenges facing humanity in the 21st century: climate change and the destruction of nature, growing inequalities, the return of authoritarianism and reactionary ideologies.
In 2014, he was elected Chair of ISA's Social Movements Research Committee. During this four-year term, he organised 14 international colloquia, including the founding congress of the Mexican Network for the Study of Social Movements (400 participants) and the main symposium devoted to social movements in Eastern Europe, at the University of Bucharest in 2016.
In 2018, he was elected vice president of the ISA for research. (This was the first time a Belgian had held such an important position within this association). In this capacity, he chaired the World Sociology Forum, which brought together over 5,000 participants. It had been organised in Porto Alegre, Brazil, but was held online because of the pandemic. His primary mission was to manage the pandemic and the transition of activities online for the association and its 67 research committees, and to reinvent a more participative organisational model thanks to the online meetings that multiplied during the pandemic.
On 28 June 2023, he was elected President of the ISA, winning 76% of the vote against the other candidate, a professor from the University of Rio who was Vice-President of the International Science Council. He will take up his post on 15 August, after a 6-week transition period with the former president.
Originally from Gemmenich, a village on the border with Germany and the Netherlands, he did most of his studies at ULiège, where he obtained an application and then a bachelor's degree in sociology (1996-2000) before doing a master's degree at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and then returning to ULiège for a doctorate (2002-2006) in sociology under the supervision of Marc Poncelet, within the centre that he directed (Pôle Sud) and which contributed to its international opening. This thesis was carried out under an FNRS fellowship and in co-supervision with the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.
The thesis was devoted to the anti-globalisation movement, which he studied at seven World Social Forums and in around ten countries. The results were published in the book "Alter-Globalization. Becoming Actors in the Global Age", published by Polity in Cambridge, which remains his main publication to this day.
His time at ULiège was essential for him to acquire a solid grounding in sociology and the social sciences, "with passionate and fascinating teachers to whom I owe a great deal, such as Marc Poncelet, Jean Gadisseur, Olgierd Kuty, Marc Jacquemain and Didier Vrancken".
He is currently pursuing his research into global sociology, social movements, and the sociology of youth and religion as an FNRS Senior Research Fellow at UCLouvain, within the Centre de recherche Démocratie, Institutions, Subjectivité (CriDIS).
With this election to the presidency, Geoffrey Pleyers hopes to strengthen the global dialogue between researchers from different continents and the international influence of the social sciences in French-speaking Belgium. He would also like to be able to help meet a challenge of which Belgium has the secret: to help revitalise the Flemish and French-speaking sociology associations and create opportunities for exchange between them.
Book in open access: Social Movements and Politics during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Bristol University Press, 2022.
Publications: Academia - Twitter: @GeoffreyPleyers
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