Topic of the thesis: Public Space, Civil Life, and Justice: Assessing the Public Library as a form of Social Infrastructure.

Abstract: Arguments about the dissolution of the public realm have enlarged the attention for a spectrum of public and private hubs as catalysts for civil life and cohesion. Despite transformations and challenges, public libraries often play a critical role in urban environments and constitute pivotal cases to observe the conditions to improve community vitality and contrast isolation and exclusion. Spaces such as libraries may provide public arenas otherwise denied to the most vulnerable, and better achieve social justice compared with more floating models of leisure or cultural consumption. Nevertheless, any political management of the public space recalls the issue of accessibility, regulating proper use and legitimate disorder, penalizing behaviors, and stabilizing both long-standing and novel forms of social exclusion.
Considering both potentials and criticalities of the public library as a form of social infrastructure, my ethnographic research aims at disclosing the connections between relationships, power and space, to contribute to the sociological interest in commonality and justice in the public.

Research interests: Interaction and agency – Cultural sociology – Sociology of deviance – Public space – Socialization.

Graduated from: University of Padova (BA) – University of Trento (Jointly with Masaryk University, Karl-Franzens University of Graz, University of Zadar).

Degrees obtained: Joint MA in Cultural Sociology/MA in Sociology and Social Research – BA in Sociological Sciences.

E-mail address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.