Topic of thesis: How urban agricultural practices are influencing the management of public spaces and the relation between humans and nature in the cities.
Abstract: My research project aims to investigate through an empirical analysis a number of urban agriculture experiences carried out in Rome and Athens. In the past years these two European cities of the Mediterranean have experienced a consolidation of neoliberal politics, applied by national governments, that have shaped social interactions and public spaces. Starting from 2009, as a reaction to these trends, Rome and Athens, similarly to several other European cities, have experimented an enormous diffusion of urban agriculture practices. These practices are carried out by groups of citizens and social movements that are intensely enrooted in local territories, and try to fight against fragmentation and social disaggregation that currently characterize urban tissues. They are creating pathways for re-appropriation of neglected areas and are cooperating to establish selfmanaged green spaces. Within this context, the experiences examined in the present study are in open opposition with a conception of urban territory as a simple space of consumption and production where a collection of objects and goods can be freely hyper-exploited. While generating practices of collective farming, the subjects here analysed are trying to produce new spatial configurations to reinforce social relations and to challenge social exclusion and segregation - dynamics to which megacities inhabitants are increasingly exposed. Through an ethnographic research process, my project will investigate and analyse social and spatial transformations currently produced by social movements that drive the practices described above in the two Mediterranean cities.
Research interests: Urban Farming- Humans and Non- Humans Relations - Collective management of Public Spaces- Environmental Social Movements.
Graduated from: University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (MA). University of Rome La Sapienza (BA)
Degrees obtained: MA in Anthropology of the contemporary world. BA in Theories and Practices of Anthropology.
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