Session chairing and presentation, with Federico Fornaro, on "Toward socio-cultural territorialization of the Open Sea. Insight from Cultural and Social Geography and Oceanic Sailing", and presentation of theoretical-visual contribution on “Staying with the problem in the Open Sea. On the plastisphere as hybrid ecological formation of the Chthlucene” (with comments of the shots of the photo exhnition "Explorations in the Plastisphere").

On the 5th of June 2023 I co-chaired the compelling session “EP004 - Exploring the Emotional Connection Between Society and the Ocean” at the Aquatic Sciences Meeting ASLO 2023 in Palma de Mallorca. On this occasion we provided the participants with a bonus content and display the pictures of the photographic exhibition “Exploration of the Plastisphere” by adopting an innovative hands-on-art  approach.

On the 31st of May I have been interviewed on the meaning and the rationale for the reportage and the photographic exhibition "Exploration in the Plastisphere" on RBE radio. Podcast available.

“Explorations in the Plastisphere” is the title of the new photo exhibition promoted in the series of public engagement activities at the Department of Economics, Social Studies, Applied Mathematics and Statistics - University of Turin. Organised by dr. Chiara Certomà’s research team DIGGEO@ESOMAS, the exhibition proposes an unconventional perspective on one of the most cogent issues of our time, i.e. the marine plastic pollution, by visually investigating the new hybrid ecologies emerging on the plastisphere.

On Thursday 25 May 2023 at 5.00 p.m. the project team of ‘Commonshood in the Garden’ will meet some of Turin’s civic associations and initiatives in the SME garden.

Our working paper "Critical geography of Digital Social Innovation. “Reading for difference” the space and spatialities of socio-technological networks in the augmented city" has been presented by Paolo Giaccaria at the 21th Annual STS Conference Graz 2023 .

The article "Climate Adaptation Plans, Participatory Processes and Socio-environmental Justice: A Critical Analysis of the Cases of Ancona, Bologna, and Rome" I wrote with Margherita Gori Nocentini is now out on a special issue of Geotema dedicated to map emerging environmental politics in Italy (available on this webpage).

On the 25th of March 2023 I organised a short marine exploration in Anzio (Rome) with Luisa Galgani (GEOMAR Kiel, CNR-ISMAR) and the support of Federico Fornaro, director of the local section of the Italian Naval League, to test a Neuston Net for marine microplastic collection on a sailbot.

On 10 March 2023 I will discuss the new book by Antonello Romano "The geography of digital platforms. Maps, spaces and data of digital intermediation" (available for free here) together with Tiziano Bonini at the University of Siena and with colleagues from the PRIN project Short-Term City, Cristina Capineri and Venere Sanna.

The conference session we (me and Chiara Certomà and Luisa Galgani, GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany) are organising during the International Geographical Union Thematic Conference on "The Ocean and Seas in Geographical Thought", titled “Territorialising the High Sea: Socio-cultural mapping the interaction between humans and the Ocean”, has had the honour to receive the U.N. Ocean Decade Endorsement by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission at UNESCO.

Very happy that a new paper I co-authored with Paolo Giaccaria (DIGGEO@ESOMAS) is now out in pre-print on Urban Geographies! We want to thanks the editor Nathan McClintock for supporting us during the whole review process and the three referees that provided challenging but inspiring suggestions. Warm thanks to Silvia Cioli and Luca D'Eusebio@Zappata Romana and all the Rome's gardeners that shared their experience with us!

A new book exploring the multiple temporalities mobilised in climate change politics, edited by Håvard Haarstad, Jakob Grandin, Kristin Kjærås, and Eleanor Johnson has been published by UCL Press under the title "Haste. The slow politics of climate urgency".The book also includes a chapter of mine on "Promises and contradictions of digital sustainability in the post-pandemic city".

Our project collaborator, Daniel Torchia, lead the publication process of a reporting article on the Orto della SME experience, in collaboration with Laura Corazza, Jacopo Fresta and me. The paper is just out and open access at the Sustainability journal website.

We will be happy to receive your abstracts for our session titled "Territorialising the High Sea” (https://igu-chg-2023.unimib.it/session-list/20-territorialising-the-high-sea/#). Together with participants’ contributes the session will host a kick-off tale of the territorialization process of the High Sea video documented by the sailor and independent video-maker Federico Fornaro, Managing Director of the international news agency Raw-News.

I have organised with Luisa Galgani (GEOMAR - Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel, lgalgani@geomar.de), Ngozi Oguguah (Nigerian Institute For Oceanography and Marine Research), Ana Fernandez Carrera (Leibniz-Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemuende) and Allison Fong (Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research) a geo-oceanographic session focused on citizen participation and fostering transdisciplinary collaborations at the next ASLO Aquatic Sciences Meeting 2023, Palma de Mallorca, Spain, from 4–9 June 2023.  

A new social innovation project has been just granted by the CRT Foundation to DIGGEO@ESOMAS: "CommonsHood in the Garden. A local network for the creation of non--monetary value at the Orto della SME by using civic blockchain" in Turin! I will run it in collaboration with the Department of Management (Laura Corazza) and the Department of Computer Science (Guido Boella). The project responds to the need to increase social cohesion of local economic networks in urban fringes at the cross-road of different socio-economic and cultural contexts, and to improve the quality of the environment and urban greenery, through the collective and circular management of public areas. To this end, it adopts digital tools for civic activism.

DIGGEO@ESOMAS has recently received a UniTo – MUR Grant for Internationalisation for a proposal titled “Preparing a COST Action proposal on DSI in the European cities” - we are ready to start working in February 2023! The project is intended to feed basic research and boost international dimension and attractiveness of UniTo by leading the consolidation and further expansion of a wide international networks of academic and high-level research institutions (including strategic partners from UNITA).

I just joined two inspiring associations and planning to actively collaborate with both of them, the U.N. Ocean Decade's Global Stakeholder Forum and the Marine Social Science association, Italy Network.

On the 9th of December I am presenting my work titled "Narrazioni dell’Innovazione Sociale Digitale a confronto. “Leggere per differenza” spazio e spazialità delle reti socio-tecnologiche nella città aumentata" at the Beyond Globalisation:Narratives/ Oltre la Globalizzazione: Narrazioni event organised by the italian Society of Geographical Studies (SSG) in Como (University of Insubria).

We are hiring a 1-year research assistant (1st Feb 2023-31 Jan 2024) to work with us in coordinating the networking, writing, and submitting a COST Action proposal on Digital Social Innovation in European Cities.