Ignacia Perugorría is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of the Basque Country (EHU) and Coordinator of the EHU node of the ENLIGHT IDenti-T Network.

She is Co-Director of the Collective Identity Research Center (EHU) and Coordinator of GAIT | Gizarte Aldaketa Ikerketa Taldea, a high-performance consolidated research group within the Basque University System, where she leads the research line on Social Mobilisation, Civic Engagement, and Popular Culture. She currently serves as co–Principal Investigator on a research project funded by The British Academy, the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences, and she is also co-founder and co-coordinator of the New Far Right Global Research Network and the Network on Necropolitics and Mass Violence, both affiliated with the Research Committee on Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change (RC48) of the International Sociological Association (ISA).

She received her PhD in Social Sciences from EHU, her MA in Sociology from Rutgers University (USA), and her BA (Licenciatura) in Sociology from the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), all three with the highest honors bestowed by these institutions, including the Extraordinary Doctorate Award. She is a Fulbright Scholar and has also been awarded fellowships by the Institute of International Education (USA) and the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness.

Ignacia’s research lies at the intersection of social movement studies, the sociology of culture, and political sociology, with a particular focus on the role of collective identities in processes of democratic transformation. Her work adopts a historical-comparative and relational approach to examine how identities are constructed, negotiated, and contested within the evolving landscape of identity politics in Europe and beyond. In doing so, she contributes to emerging debates on the ‘new Far Right’, democratic and cultural backsliding, the reconfiguration of socio-political cleavages, and processes of ideological and affective polarisation.

Empirically, she combines quantitative and qualitative methods with visual ethnography and social network analysis to investigate the complex intersections between human rights, gender politics, climate change, and far-right ideologies within multi-issue youth organisations. Her research also examines the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the visual framing of pressing political issues—ranging from socio-ecological catastrophes and anti-immigration narratives to the instrumentalisation of women’s and girls’ safety—within contemporary far-right communication strategies. In addition, she analyses the emergence of new neoconservative subjectivities, including cultural forms of mobilisation within youth religious movements, as well as transnational anti-rights networks opposing progressive moral policies in Spain and Latin America. She is currently Lead Guest Editor of two forthcoming special issues on these topics, to be published in Current Sociology and the European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology.

Through this research agenda, Ignacia contributes to interdisciplinary dialogue on the transformation of identities in contemporary democracies, addressing key IDenti-T themes such as gender and sexuality, cultural and political contestation, and the role of identity in shaping inclusion, exclusion, and democratic resilience. Her work also engages with broader societal challenges linked to climate change, digital communication, and the reconfiguration of public spheres, aligning with ENLIGHT’s strategic priorities in Equity, Culture and Creativity, and Democratic Transformation.

• Email: ignacia.perugorria@ehu.eus
• ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1137-7474
• Scientific Production: https://ekoizpen-zientifikoa.ehu.eus/investigadores/126064/detalle