Topic of the thesis: Environmental Justice approach to Disasters.

Abstract: The aim of my research project is to contribute to socio-anthropological debates in so-called Disaster Research, to which the Environmental Justice approach – deeply rooted in the field of Political Ecology – will be applied. In particular, the aim is to contribute to a reconceptualization of the notion of ‘disaster’, in an attempt to overcome the distinction – publicly perceived and academically rooted – between different types of catastrophic events. The project builds on the assumption that the intensification and multiplication of these phenomena – in their heterogeneity – lead to the need (and urgency) to strip these events of their exceptionality and to consider them as symptoms and effects of an irreversible ecological mutation. My research will involve, on the one hand, the analysis of the mapping of environmental conflicts (Environmental Justice Atlas, ICTA-UAB) in disaster and post-disaster contexts on a global scale. On the other hand, ethnographic fieldwork will be developed in disaster and post-disaster contexts on the Italian territory. Here, a narrative approach to disasters and environmental injustice storytelling will be applied.  The hypothesis that guides the project lies in the assumption that the causes, effects and dynamics of disasters of a different type can be traced back to the relationship that the current socio-economic system has been forging, over time, between society and environment and between the human and the non-human, contributing to the reproduction of socio-ecological inequalities.

Research interests: Socio-Environmental Justice – Political Ecology – Disaster Research.

Graduated from: University of Bologna (BA) – University of Siena (MA) – Autonomous University of Barcelona (MS).

Degrees obtained: BA and MA in Anthropology – MS in Applied Anthropology and Social Intervention.

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