In the Hesburgh Center for International Studies, there’s a colorful booklet called “Kenya Youth Scenarios” on the desk in Ann Mische’s office. It dates back 15 years to a participatory dialogue project designed to help young people re-imagine their country’s futures – now the broader focus of a new book that Mische is finishing as she returns from sabbatical July 1.
Mische is putting the final touches on the book’s last chapter as she prepares to lead the Kellogg Institute for a semester as acting director, while director Aníbal Pérez-Liñán is on sabbatical to pursue his own writing.
“I’ve collected reports on 250 scenario projects from around the world, on topics ranging from the future of democracy to transitions from armed conflict, challenges to food security, and responses to climate change,” explains Mische, a Kellogg Institute faculty fellow and associate professor of sociology and peace studies.
A Scholar of Movements, Dialogue, and Democracy
A cultural and political sociologist, Mische has built an influential career studying social movements, democratic politics, civic engagement, political parties, public deliberation, and the networks through which people organize for change. Her work has moved across Brazil, Kenya, and transnational advocacy spaces, tracing how activists and institutions communicate, build coalitions, and imagine political possibility.
Mische holds a joint appointment in the Department of Sociology and the Keough School of Global Affairs, where she is a core faculty member of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. She has served as chair of three sections of the American Sociological Association – Sociology of Culture, Political Sociology, and Theory – and as co-editor of Social Movement Studies: A Journal of Social, Cultural, and Political Protest.
How Public Scenarios Shape Political Life
With Kellogg support, Mische traveled to Kenya and Brazil to evaluate how narrative approaches to foresight, based on storytelling techniques that engage with multiple perspectives and pathways, have steered public debates. She is also interested in how these future-oriented deliberations influence participants’ careers, networks, and public engagement.
“What kinds of futures are people imagining, personally and collectively?” she asks, seated next to easel paper filled with ideas and insights from her students closer to home. “What do they see as dangers but also as possibilities? How do they envision having an impact? And how do these discussions open up some pathways, and close down others?”
Her book project, “Futures in Contention: Public Scenarios and Transformative Politics in the Global Arena,” explores how dialogue about long-term change has traveled across civic and humanitarian networks, along with corporate settings and elite spaces such as the annual World Economic Forum in Davos. Drawing on participant interviews as well as textual and network analysis, the book traces how multi-stakeholder scenario methodologies have spread around the globe and shaped viewpoints and policies.
When Anti-Partisan Protest Creates a Vacuum
The project builds on themes from her first book, Partisan Publics: Communication and Contention Across Brazilian Youth Activist Networks, which examined youth activism, anti-partisanship, and democratic restructuring in Brazil during the 1980s and 90s. The book received honorable mention for the American Sociological Association Political Sociology section’s Best Book Award.
More recently, Mische has explored the global wave of anti-partisan protest since the 2008 financial crisis. She wanted to understand how the fierce rejection of political parties in Brazil’s 2013 protests contributed to the rise of extremist populist leader Jair Bolsonaro. She and a co-author conducted a comparative study of how political parties respond to anti-partisan protest waves in 12 countries, leading to differing pathways of political change. The resulting article in the American Journal of Sociology has won prizes from three different sections of the American Sociological Association.
“The danger is that the rejection of political parties creates a leadership vacuum,” Mische said. “Instead, we need insider-outsider coalitions and people who know how to work with institutional power along with challengers from social movements and civil society.” She plans research on how such coalitions work in transnational pro-democracy movements as her next project.
Leading Kellogg Forward
That interest in dialogue across sectors and perspectives also shapes how Mische thinks about Kellogg’s role on campus.
As acting director of Kellogg, she’ll make a priority of the institute’s interdisciplinary strength and maintain its reputation as an inclusive space. Mische especially looks forward to attending work-in-progress seminars and working group presentations, having last held her own in April.
“These exchanges will absolutely be the joy of it,” Mische said of her new role. “I love the discussions and the intellectual challenge.” She appreciates that Pérez-Liñán works to keep an expansive definition of global democracy, with roles for history, literature, religion, anthropology, and beyond.
“Ann is an internationally respected scholar committed to the study of democracy, justice, and inclusion,” said Pérez-Liñán. “It’s a crucial time for the Kellogg Institute, and I thank her for stepping into the role during my sabbatical.”
Beyond the institute, Mische will represent Kellogg at a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace dialogue event in August and a Ford Foundation conference in December.
“I also will help plan the next Global Democracy Conference, to be held in Mexico City in 2027,” she said. “And I’ll be counting on a community of colleagues to help carry Kellogg’s work forward into another successful year.”
The Kellogg Institute, part of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, is a leading center for interdisciplinary research dedicated to understanding, strengthening, and renewing democracy worldwide.