Calendar

Preface

In the face of overlapping crises—from war to climate change—European societies are witnessing shifting patterns of civic engagement, with volunteering emerging as a key yet uneven form of solidarity. The seminar explores the variability of volunteering through new comparative data from the Czech Republic and Italy. By addressing questions of who volunteers, where and how, the seminar contributes to a renewed research agenda on volunteering in turbulent times.

Key speakers

Tereza Pospíšilová, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, Czech Republic

Riccardo Guidi, University of Firenze, Italy

Tania Cappadozzi, Istat – Italian Institute of Statistics, Italy

Gabriela Strašilová, Czech Statistical Office, Czech Republic

Topic

European societies are currently navigating turbulent times, marked by the convergence of multiple, overlapping crises—including war, climate change, economic instability, and democratic erosion (Cataldo et al., 2025). In this context, citizens and civil societies are responding in diverse ways, with volunteering emerging as one of the key forms of solidarity and civic engagement. Volunteering has been declining since the 1990s and at the same time changing its patterns. The aim of this seminar is to share new findings and discuss the different forms of volunteering and thereby to contribute to the new research agenda focusing on the variability of volunteering and its implications in times of change (Koolen-Maas et al., 2022; Hustinx et al., 2022).

This seminar adopts an international perspective. The first part focuses on Czech – Italian comparison utilizing national datasets on volunteering and voluntary activities. These datasets, recently produced by the statistical institutes of the Czech Republic (ČSÚ, 2024) and Italy (Istat, 2025), are based on the International Labour Organization’s methodology for measuring volunteer work (ILO, 2021).

The second part of the seminar broadens the scope through international reflections, with contributions from Slovakia and Norway, and opens space for complementary perspectives and a discussion.

We want to address three central questions: (1) Who engages in volunteering? When we focus on the 'core' group of the most intensively involved volunteers, in what ways do they differ from the broader volunteer population? (2) How are the patterns of volunteering shaped by the characteristics of the communities in which they occur? In particular, what is the difference between rural and urban settings (Paarlberg et al., 2021)? (3) What trajectories might volunteering follow in the near future? In this study, we use intergenerational differences as a proxy for identifying potential shifts in volunteering patterns over time.

Organizing Team

Ksenija Fonović, Ondřej Hrubeš and Tereza Pospíšilová, Charles University – Faculty of Humanities; Selene Greco, Sapienza University of Rome - Department of Communication and Social Research

Contact for information and support: ksenija.fonovic@fhs.cuni.cz 

This seminar was supported by the Cooperatio Program, research area Sociology and Applied Social Sciences.