Dr. Laurence Cox

 Professional Career to Date

Lecturer in Sociology, NUI Maynooth (2000 - present)
Director, Centre for Research on Environment and Community and College Lecturer in Sociology, Waterford IT (1996 - 2000)
Part-time lecturer, teaching assistant and tutor, Trinity College Dublin - School of European Studies and Dept. of Sociology (1992 - 96)

Research Interests

Social movement research (alterglobalisation movement, activist sustainability, movement milieux)
Buddhist Studies (western Buddhism, Buddhism in Ireland, early western Buddhists in Asia)
Western Marxism (Marxism and social movements, agency-oriented theories of society)
Working-class studies (oral history, community activism in Ireland)
Research methodology (participatory / action research methods, comparative / historical approaches to European movements, history from below)

Teaching and Other Activities

Within academia Dr Cox has taught a wide range of subjects at all levels, including courses in global society, democracy and active citizenship, social inequality, European societies and politics, social class, gender, qualitative research methods, IT research tools, social movements, the sociology of revolutions, Marxism and culture, power and politics, social movement praxis, etc. He has been involved in designing and establishing a number of undergraduate and graduate degree programmes at NUIM and WIT. At Masters and PhD level he works with social movement practitioners carrying out participatory action research for and with their own movements. He has a long history of involvement in popular education work and alternative education projects of different kinds, ranging from community-based oral history to popular education for social movement organisations.

Dr Cox is founder and co-editor of the multi-lingual, peer-reviewed Interface journal of social movement studies <http://interfacejournal.net>, has guest-edited Contemporary Buddhism, is on the editorial advisory board of several journals and has refereed for over a dozen journals and publishers. He has a long-standing commitment to movement-relevant research and co-publishing with practitioners. Beyond academia, he has been involved in a very wide range of social movements and voluntary organisations for over 25 years in many different organising roles and in several countries.


Publications and presentations, 2009 - 12

Most of these, along with earlier pieces, can be found on the NUI Maynooth eprints repository at http://eprints.nuim.ie (search for "Cox").

Forthcoming    Marxism and social movements (with Colin Barker, John Krinsky, Alf Nilsen). Amsterdam / Chicago: Brill / Haymarket, 2013

Forthcoming    Understanding European movements: new social movements, global justice struggles, anti-austerity protest (with Cristina Flesher Fominaya). London etc.: Routledge, May 2013

Forthcoming    Buddhism and Ireland: from the Celts to the counter-culture and beyond. Sheffield: Equinox, March 2013

2012    “The season of revolution: the Arab Spring and European mobilizations” (with Magid Shihade and Cristina Flesher Fominaya). Interface vol. 4 (1): 1 - 16

2012    “Periodising Irish Buddhism”. Paper to Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions conference, Cork, May

2012    “How movements define themselves: culture, history and Europe”. Paper to Council for European Studies conference, Boston, March

2012    “Understanding global waves of popular mobilization”. Paper to "Understanding the New Wave of Protest and Social Cooperation: Triangulation of the Arab Revolutions, the European Mobilizations and the American Occupy Movement” workshop, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard, March

2012    “El proyecto Interface: una reflexión sobre los movimientos sociales y el conocimiento” (in Spanish, with Cristina Flesher Fominaya). Pp. 171 - 185 in Alberto Arribas Lozano, Nayra García González, Aurora Álvarez Veinguer and Antonio Ortega Santos (eds), Tentativas, contagios, desbordes. Territorios del pensiamento. Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada.

2011    “Ken Saro-Wiwa: a sociological perspective”. “Letters from the breadbasket: detention correspondence of Ken Saro-Wiwa”, presentation to NUIM library, November

2011    "Feminism, women's movements and women in movement" (with Sara Motta, Cristina Flesher Fominaya and Catherine Eschle). Interface (3 / 2): 1 - 32.

2011    Review of Hilary Wainwright, Reclaim the state: experiments in popular democracy. Interface (3 / 2): 473 - 477.

2011    "Gramsci in Mayo: a Marxist perspective on social movements in Ireland". In proceedings of New agendas in social movement studies conference. NUIM Dept. of Sociology (CD-ROM).

2011    "How do we keep going? Skills and strategies for movement sustainability." Into-ebooks (Finnish NGO publisher), Helsinki

2011    Review essay on Institute for Development Studies, Powercube website in Journal of Power (forthcoming, vol 4 issue 2 (August) with response from John Gaventa of the IDS)

2011   " 'I'm in the news today, oh boy': responding to smear tactics and media bullying" (with Aileen O'Carroll and Alessio Lunghi). Interface 3/1: 190 - 194.

2011    "There must be some kind of way out of here: social movements and the crisis in Ireland". New Left Project / Crisisjam May Day International joint issue.

2011    "Popular responses to the Irish crisis and the hope for radical change: organic crisis and the different meanings of counter-hegemony". In Colin Barker and Mike Tyldesley (eds.) Sixteenth international conference on alternative futures and popular protest: a selection of papers from the conference. Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University (CD-ROM).

2011    "When is an assembly riotous, and who decides? The success and failure of police attempts to criminalise protest" (with Ealáir Ní Dhorchaigh). 241 -  261 in William Sheehan (ed.), Riotous assemblies (Mercier, March 2011).

2011    Ireland’s new religious movements. (Editor, with Olivia Cosgrove, Carmen Kuhling and Peter Mulholland). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

2011    "Understanding Ireland’s new religious movements". Editors' introduction, with Olivia Cosgrove, Carmen Kuhling and Peter Mulholland. 1 - 27 in Ireland’s new religious movements. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

2011    "The Wild Irish girl and the 'dalai lama of little Thibet': the long encounter between Ireland and Asian Buddhism" (with Maria Griffin). 53 - 73 in Olivia Cosgrove, Laurence Cox, Carmen Kuhling and Peter Mulholland (eds.), Ireland’s new religious movements. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

2011    “Contentious Dhammaloka - atheist, activist, Irish Buddhist”. UCC “Dhammaloka Day” symposium (February)

2010    "Beachcombing, going native and freethinking: rewriting the history of early Buddhist monastics". Guest editorial, Contemporary Buddhism vol. 11 no. 2 (with Brian Bocking and Alicia Turner): 125 - 147

2010    "The politics of Buddhist revival: U Dhammaloka as social movement organiser ". Contemporary Buddhism vol. 11 no. 2: 173 - 227

2010    "Revolution in the air: images of winning in the Irish anti-capitalist movement" (with Liz Curry). Irish Journal of Sociology vol. 18 no. 2: 86 - 105

2010    “Voices of dissent: activists’ engagements in the creation of alternative, autonomous, radical and independent media” (with Alice Mattoni, Andrejs Berdnikovs, Michela Ardizzoni). Interface: a journal for and about social movements vol. 2 (2): 1 - 22

2010    "The interests of the movement as a whole: response to David Harvey". Interface vol. 2 issue 1: 298 - 308

2010    "Current debates: new religion(s) in Ireland". Irish Journal of Sociology (18 / 1): 100 - 111

2010    "Plebeian freethought and the politics of anti-colonial solidarity: Irish Buddhists in imperial Asia". In Colin Barker and Mike Tyldesley (eds.), Fifteenth international conference on alternative futures and popular protest: a selection of papers from the conference. Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University (CD-ROM).

2010    Review of John Charlton, Don’t you hear the H-Bomb’s thunder? Youth and politics on Tyneside in the late ‘fifties and early ‘sixties. Interface vol. 2 no. 2: 374 - 376

2010    Review of Mastaneh Shah-Shuja, Zones of proletarian development. Capital and class vol. 34 no. 2: 292 - 293.

2010    “U Dhammaloka in Tokyo: the hidden history of western Buddhist monastics”. SOAS Centre for the Study of Japanese Religions / Buddhist Forum seminar (with Brian Bocking), December.

2010    "Tall tales, childhood’s country and the monastery kitchen: Irish writers in Buddhist Asia". Paper to Library Association of Ireland / Rare Books Group seminar on travel literature, National Library (November).

2010    "Why do movements want to know things, and how do they go about it?" Paper to "Learning from each other's struggles" activist / militant research workshop, NUIM (June).

2010    "Learning from each other's struggles – knowledge from and for social movements". Invited speaker, "Critical Education for Critical Times" workshop, Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice / Critical Pedagogies Group, University of Nottingham (May).

2010    "Another world is under construction? Social movement responses to inequality and crisis". Invited speaker, Egalitarian World Initiative conference "Equality in a time of crisis", UCD (May). Paper published in Irish Left Review (May 17th).

2010    "Community development: lessons for social movements". "Better questions" seminar series, Seomra Spraoi (February).

2010    "Knowledge and study of Buddhism in Ireland before 1970". Inaugural seminar, Irish Network for Studies in Buddhism, TCD (January).

2009    "Hearts with one purpose alone? Mapping the diverse landscapes of personal sustainability in social movements". Emotion, space and society 2: 52 – 61 (special issue on emotional sustainability in social movements).

2009    "Border country dharma: Buddhism, Ireland and peripherality" (with Maria Griffin). Journal of Global Buddhism vol. 10: 93 – 125.

2009    "Lawrence O'Rourke / U Dhammaloka: working-class Irish freethinker, and the first European bhikkhu?" Critical note, Journal of Global Buddhism vol. 10: 135 – 144.

2009    "Civil society vs social movements" (with Ana Margarida Esteves, Sara Motta). Interface: a journal for and about social movements vol. 1 (2): 1 – 21.

2009    "Movement knowledge: what do we know, how do we create knowledge and what do we do with it?" (with Cristina Flesher Fominaya). Interface: a journal for and about social movements vol. 1 (1): 1 – 20.

2009    "Marxism and social movements". Invited panellist, Historical Materialism conference, SOAS London (Nov.)

2009    "Arhats in the attic: hidden histories of Buddhism in Ireland". Invited speaker, National Museum of Ireland conference "Asian art and Ireland" (Nov.)

Along with earlier publications, many of which can be found at http://eprints.nuim.ie, Dr Cox has also produced a wide range of research reports, translations, and non-academic publications for movement audiences and organisations.