Féderic Guillaume Gass-Quintero

Research Interests

• Political Sociology
• Cultural Sociology
• Democracy and the Aftermath of Political Violence
• Social Movements and Civil Society
• Social Theory
• Ethnography and Qualitative Methods 

I am a cultural and political sociologist interested in the transformations of democracy and the aftermath of political violence. My research examines how meaning-making processes shape the experience of public problems and social movements’ ability to organize, coordinate, and foster alternative political understandings. My work is grounded in ethnographic research, which is uniquely suited to studying political processes and historical transformations as they unfold.

For my dissertation book project, Disputing Violence: Civic Ecologies after Colombia’s Peace Agreement, I conducted extensive multi-site ethnographic research among activists and volunteers organizing against political violence in Bogotá in the aftermath of Colombia’s highly disputed 2016 Peace Agreement. Research on peace and conflict holds that civil society plays a crucial role in overcoming endemic conflict. But it doesn’t tell us much about how such processes scale up, become robust, or fail to do so. My dissertation asks why peace activism in Bogotá has simultaneously expanded and become dispersed, growing increasingly vibrant while remaining unable to coordinate across organizations and settings. I argue that as peace activism develops into diverse organizational niches, it becomes structured by cultural forms and organizational dynamics that discourage cross-movement coordination. Yet these same mechanisms sustain a remarkably durable ecology of civic engagement. The project contributes to broader debates on collective action, civil society, and democratic politics in the aftermath of violence.

My work is also informed by social theory. Originally trained as a philosopher at the École normale supérieure, I draw on the traditions of phenomenology and American pragmatism to rethink key concepts in cultural and political sociology. This work has resulted in publications as well as the organization of a doctoral workshop and an international conference.

Alongside my dissertation, I am developing two collaborative projects. I am co-editing a special issue with Prof. Daniel Cefaï (EHESS) examining how pragmatist social theory can contribute to contemporary research on social movements. I am also collaborating with Prof. Laura Adler (Yale University) on a research project on informal labor markets based on interviews with coffee pickers and farmers in southwest Colombia. The project examines how shifting global demand, digital technologies, and efforts to formalize informal labor reshape work, labor relations, and livelihoods.

I am currently a doctoral researcher at the Max-Weber-Kolleg and the EHESS and have also been a visiting PhD student at the University of Chicago (Division of the Social Sciences) and Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá.

Peer-Reviewed Publications:

• Minatti, W., & Gass-Quintero, F. G. (2026). ‘Being affected’: The epistemic value of vulnerability in fieldwork. Qualitative Research, 26(3), 623-642. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241308712

• Gass-Quintero, F. G. (2018). Towards a Schützian approach to group-membership. Schutzian Research: A Yearbook of Lifeworldly Phenomenology and Qualitative Social Science, 10, 37-50.

Other Journal Articles:

• Gass-Quintero, F. G., & Aulanier, A. (2021). Un dialogue autour de la phénoménologie sociale : Bernhard Waldenfels et Alfred Schütz sur l’étrangeté et la morale. [A dialogue in social phenomenology: Bernhard Waldenfels and Alfred Schütz on strangeness and morality]. Le Cercle Herméneutique, 36/37, 11-42

• Gass-Quintero, F. G. (2024). [Critical extended review (~12,500 words) of the book Pragmatism in the Americas, ed. G. F. Pappas (Fordham University Press, 2008)]. Pragmata: Revue d’études pragmatistes, 7/8.

Interviews and Public Sociology:

• Cefaï, D., interviewed by Gass-Quintero, F. G. (2025). Pragmata, association et revue. Dix années de réception du pragmatisme en philosophie et en sciences sociales dans le monde francophone. [Pragmata: Ten years of the reception of pragmatism in philosophy and the social sciences in the francophone world]. Revue du MAUSS, 66(2), 433-473. https://doi.org/10.3917/rdm1.066.0433.

• Gass-Quintero, F. G. (2023). Interview: “Frieden – ein schwammiger Begriff” [Peace, an elusive concept]. TAZ Latinorama. blogs.taz.de/latinorama/frieden-ein-schwammiger-begriff/