About
Because the biggest decisions of our time are fundamentally political, and they deserve to be argued over by more than the people who make them. Because important discussions require commitment to read and openness to learn. And because thinking well together is a habit that has to be practiced.
The point of the endeavor
Our name is a warning. Giovanni Sartori liked to mock social-science research that got stuck on questions such as whether a "dog-cat" barks or meows, but reality gives an obvious answer: the dog-cat does not exist. It is what you get when labels are stretched until they mean nothing, when one example is studied as if it were the whole, and when the categories are wrong before the debate even begins.
Il Cangatto exists to close the gap between ordinary citizens, the people who study society, and those who govern it. Formal academic training left the biggest questions unasked, let alone answered. So we go back to the texts that frame them best, across political economy, economic sociology, history and political science, and we argue about them as peers with a format encouraging everyone to speak.
We are non-partisan but not neutral. We believe progress is driven by forces moving in different—often conflicting—directions, so that it should be studied as a political object shaped by choices, coalitions, and power. That means it belongs in public argument, conducted carefully and backed by evidence.
A brief history
The circle began in the winter of 2025 as a reading group in political economy for university students—principally from the Scuola Normale Superiore, Università Bocconi, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Sciences Po, and European University Institute—who wanted to complement their formal training in the social sciences with a different kind of discussion, more relevant to the defining questions of our time.
By summer 2026 it had a new name, a neat graphic identity, a website, members affiliated with far more institutions, and a burgeoning lineup of monthly workshops coherently organized in series.
The 2026–27 program presents the first year-long instance of our new approach to workshops: various series organize thematically a multiplicity of monthly workshops, run by a management committee and a growing group of organizers.
Should you be interested in contributing with a workshop idea, do not hesitate to shoot us an e-mail or contact our management committee!
Management committee
Past & future guests and collaborators
Guglielmo Meardi
Dean of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences
Scuola Normale Superiore
Mario Pianta
Professor Emeritus of Economic Policy
Scuola Normale Superiore
Donatella della Porta
Professor of Political Science; Director, Centre on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS)
Scuola Normale Superiore
Pepper Culpepper
Blavatnik Professor of Government and Public Policy
Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford
Colin Crouch
Professor Emeritus; External Scientific Member
University of Warwick; Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne
Paolo Gerbaudo
Senior Research Fellow
Complutense University of Madrid
Mark Blyth
William R. Rhodes '57 Professor of International Economics; Director, Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance
Watson School of International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Lucio Baccaro
Director
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne
Jonas Pontusson
Professor of Comparative Politics
University of Geneva
Sheri Berman
Professor of Political Science
Barnard College, Columbia University
Stefan Dercon
Professor of Economic Policy
Blavatnik School of Government and Department of Economics, University of Oxford
Saule Omarova
Earle Hepburn Professor of Law
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Nicolas Véron
Senior Fellow
Bruegel and Peterson Institute for International Economics
Daniela Gabor
Professor of Economics
SOAS University of London
Katharina Pistor
Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law
Columbia Law School
Ulrike Lepont
CNRS Junior Professor
Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics, Sciences Po
Chase Foster
Lecturer in Politics
King's College London
Frédéric Marty
CNRS Research Director
GREDEG, Université Côte d'Azur
Angela Wigger
Associate Professor of International Relations
Radboud University
Steffen Murau
Research Group Leader and Co-Chair
Global Climate Forum, Berlin
Karsten Kohler
Associate Professor in Economics
University of Leeds
Brian Tamanaha
John S. Lehmann University Professor
Washington University in St. Louis Law School
Karl Klare
Matthews Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Law Emeritus
Northeastern University School of Law
Paolo Napoli
Professor (Directeur d'études)
École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris
Mark Tushnet
William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Emeritus
Harvard Law School
Paola Subacchi
Professor and Chair in Sovereign Debt and Finance
Sciences Po
Marco Goldoni
Professor of Philosophy of Law
University of Glasgow
Pasquale Pasquino
CNRS Research Director; Global Distinguished Professor of Politics and Law
CNRS (Paris) and New York University
Peter A. Hall
Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies
Harvard University
Support us
Free to attend, not free to run.
Rooms, travel for guests and the occasional aperitivo are paid for by small donations and by institutions who lend us space. If you or your organisation would like to host a workshop, sponsor a series or simply contribute, write to us.