The Zetkin Forum for Social Research (ZF) is a Europe-based platform that was created in 2024 to foster international exchange amongst researchers and political movements. We strive to facilitate debates between progressive forces worldwide by both disseminating perspectives from the Global South in Europe and producing analyses of European developments for international audiences.

The ZF is dedicated to knowledge production and rigorous scientific research for the purpose of advancing internationalism, anti-fascism, and social progress. In collaboration with movements and organisations from across Europe and beyond, we investigate a range of issues including the development of contemporary socio-economic conditions, the mechanisms of the capitalist world economy, and the history of the labour movement.

To this end, we host a variety of projects and initiatives, including a research centre, the “Zetkin Journal”, and international conferences on burning issues.

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The ZF is the European partner of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, a network of research institutions in the Global South guided by popular movements. We seek to transmit their analyses to organisations and institutions in Europe and share pertinent research from Europe in return.

The ZF stands in the tradition of Clara and Maxim Zetkin.

As a young woman, Clara Zetkin (1857-1933) recognized that education was a tool to uplift the working masses. She left behind her family’s petty bourgeois aspirations to immerse herself in worker’s struggles as an educator and organizer. Through her publications and speeches, she mobilized the working women of Germany and Europe to fight alongside men for the liberation of their class. She became a founding member of the Second International and long-serving executive member of the Third International. Her theoretical contributions to the analysis of women’s liberation and fascism, alongside her practical solidarity through the Internationale Arbeiterhilfe (Workers International Relief) and the Rote Hilfe (Red Aid) contributed greatly to the strengthening of international friendship and advancement of social progress in the 20^th century.

Maxim Zetkin (1883-1965) was a trained surgeon and the youngest son of Clara Zetkin. He travelled to the Soviet Union just two years after the 1917 October Revolution to help construct a new health care system that would serve the needs of the people rather than profit. He taught a generation of young students at the Medical Institute in Moscow before joining the International Brigades to fight alongside the Spanish Republicans against Francisco Franco’s fascist forces. Following the Second World War, Zetkin returned to Germany and became a leading physician and health official in the Eastern occupation zone. He co-founded the publishing house Volk und Gesundheit (People and Health) to promote popular education on social medicine in the German Democratic Republic.

It is these principles of internationalism, anti-fascism, social progress, and rigorous scientific research that guide the work of the ZF.