Dr. Ann Mische combines interpretive and network-analytic approaches to the study of political communication in social movements and democratic politics. Her work addresses the challenges to communication and leadership posed by the location of actors in overlapping social networks. In addition, she is interested in how individual and collective projections of future possibilities influence interactions and choices in the present. Her work combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies, including ethnography, cultural analysis, and documentary research as well as formal mathematical techniques for analyzing social networks and trajectories.

Dr. Mische has recently finished a book manuscript, Partisan Publics: Communication and Contention Across Brazilian Youth Activist Networks, which is forthcoming from Princeton University Press (2007). In the book, she examines the relationship between partisanship and civic association in Brazilian youth politics during 20 years of democratic restructuring. She tracks the trajectories of five “micro-cohorts” of youth activists through intersecting institutional sectors, including political parties, the student movement, church-based activism, community-based movements, NGOs, professional organizations, and business associations. She examines the distinct styles of political communication and leadership that developed in different regions of the field, comparing orientations toward competition versus collaboration, as well as toward institutional innovation versus retrenchment. She considers the implications of these communicative styles – and the forms of political mediation and leadership they give rise to – for democratic politics in Brazil and elsewhere.

Other recent publications on the Brazilian case include “Cross-Talk in Movements: Rethinking the Culture-Network Link” in Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action, edited by Mario Diani and Doug McAdam (Oxford University Press 2003); “Juggling Multiple Futures: Personal and Collective Project-formation among Brazilian Youth Leaders” in Leadership and Social Movements, edited by Alan Johnson, Colin Barker, and Michael Lavalette (Manchester University Press 2001); “Composing a Civic Arena: Publics, Projects and Social Settings,” with Philippa Pattison (Poetics 2000); and “Projecting Democracy: The Formation of Citizenship Across Youth Networks in Brazil” (International Review of Social History, 1995). 

She has also written broader theoretical articles on agency, temporality, and social interaction. These include “What is Agency?” with Mustafa Emirbayer (American Journal of Sociology 1998), and “Between Conversation and Situation: Public Switching Dynamics Across Network Domains,” with Harrison White (Social Research 1999).  In addition, she was a principle investigator on a collaborative NSF-funded project (with Harrison White and Philippa Pattison) developing relational models for studying complex interdependencies (1999-2001).

Currently Dr. Mische is co-editor of Social Movement Studies: A Journal of Social, Cultural, and Political Protest.  She is also a consulting editor for the American Journal of Sociology and Sociological Theory. In addition, she is chair of the ASA Theory section (2007-08), an officer of the ASA’s Culture Section (2004-07) and a member of the ASA Committee on the Status of Women in Sociology (2004-07).