As part of the Anthropology of the Mediterranean course, the seminar “Voices from the Sea: Practices and Transformations of Coastal Fishing in the Mediterranean and Atlantic” will take place on Tuesday, November 18th, 2025, from 4:00 to 6:00 PM, in Room F3, Campus Luigi Einaudi (Lungo Dora Siena 100, Turin).

In this seminar, Beatrice Ferlaino, social geographer, and Ambra Zambernardi, anthropologist, will engage in dialogue on the transformations of small-scale fishing practices and coastal economies in Mediterranean and Atlantic contexts. Drawing on ethnographic and geographical fieldwork, they will explore how coastal communities negotiate environmental changes, market pressures, and new governance frameworks that are reshaping traditional relationships between people, the sea, and marine resources.

The discussion will also reflect on the role of local knowledge, community resilience, and gendered dimensions of labour in sustaining coastal livelihoods amid ecological and political transformations.

On October 13th, 2025, the Food Communities Entanglements (FoCE) research group had the pleasure of participating in the symposium “Food, Communities, Empowerment: Research Dialogue on Community-Based Foodways”, hosted by the Italian Geographical Society in the historic setting of Villa Celimontana, Rome.

Conceived as a space for interdisciplinary dialogue and knowledge exchange among scholars, practitioners, and activists, the symposium focused on the cultural and political ecologies of community-based food systems. It foregrounded ecologically sustainable and socially grounded practices through which local communities resist food insecurity, while embracing participatory and feminist research approaches.

The day was opened with welcoming remarks from Prof. Massimiliano Tabusi, Vice President of the Italian Geographical Society, followed by an introduction by Prof. Paola Minoia (University of Turin, FoCE Principal Investigator) and Prof. Chiara Rabbiosi (University of Padua), who framed the key themes of the symposium: foodways as spaces of resistance, the material and symbolic entanglements between communities and territories, and the methodological importance of co-produced knowledge.

You can watch the panel presentations here.

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We are excited to announce that the FoCE research group will be participating in the upcoming symposium organized by the Italian Geographical Society, titled: "Food, Communities, Empowerment: Research Dialogue on Community-Based Foodways", which will take place on Monday, October 13, 2025, in Rome (Villa Celimontana).

This event offers a multi-sited dialogue around how local communities resist food insecurity through culturally grounded and ecologically sustainable practices. The symposium brings together researchers, practitioners, and grassroots perspectives to explore the political, environmental, and social dimensions of food systems, with a particular focus on participatory and immersive research methods. These dialogues will centre on crucial questions, such as: 

What can we learn from multi-sited research on community-based food entanglements, and how can it help us understand novel pathways (including or excluding aid) to overcome economic, socio-environmental, and political crises? And what does it mean to adopt post-development and feminist perspectives in the struggle against food poverty and against the imposition of new global food policies?

These key topics allow us reimagine pathways toward ecological justice, social equity, and material emancipation. The FOCE team will contribute with presentations, field-based reflections, and a multimedia exhibition, highlighting our work on community food entanglements across different geographies and contexts. 

Registration (required by October 9):  Register here via Eventbrite

To attend remotely (no registration required), click HERE

Find the program here.

July - August 2025

As we continue to advance the analysis of our work, we feel the need to engage in meaningful exchanges with colleagues whose insights can sharpen our thinking and broaden our academic network.

On July 24, 2025, we were honored to receive feedback from Dr. Mathew Bukhi Mabele of the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Dodoma. Dr. Mabele’s research examines the structures and processes behind socio-ecological injustices, while also exploring transformative pathways toward just and equitable conservation. His reflections on Indigenous knowledge frameworks from Tanzania offered us valuable perspectives to enrich our approach.

On August 22, 2025, we had the pleasure of conversing with Prof. Mara J. Goldman from the Department of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder. Prof. Goldman, author of Narrating Nature: Wildlife Conservation and Maasai Ways of Knowing (2020), works at the intersection of political ecology, science studies, and Indigenous knowledge systems, with a focus on decolonizing conservation practices worldwide. Together, we explored ways to strengthen a feminist political ecology perspective, particularly by weaving in notions of “caring together” as they emerge from Maasai foodways, and how these practices are challenged by reduced access to land.

These conversations have been both inspiring and grounding, reminding us of the importance of collective reflection, knowledge exchange, and building bridges across contexts as we work toward more just and inclusive postdevelopment futures.

Convenors: Paola Minoia (University of Turin) and Chiara Rabbiosi (University of Padua)

Format: hybrid

In recent years, critical geographies have increasingly questioned the relationship between food, place, and communities. New theoretical approaches, such as new materialism, posthumanism, and post-representational theories, are pushing the boundaries of food discourses. These perspectives call for novel tools to investigate socio-ecological relationships beyond the traditional "wordy world" of food systems and policies. Concurrently, decolonial approaches focusing on food pluriverses, Indigenous ontologies, and food knowledge are challenging capitalist and colonial pressures on food systems driven by extractivist and homogenizing globalization.

Drawing from post-development and decolonial perspectives, this panel session aims to explore dynamic "foodscapes" as spaces of friction, resistance, and justice through transformative and creative methodologies. We invite contributions that present case studies reflecting methodological advancements in creative, Indigenous, participatory visual methods, storytelling, and community mapping. These approaches can uncover diverse experiences and relationships within food systems where care and conviviality are core values.

We are particularly interested in case studies that investigate how communities navigate and resist capitalist-colonial pressures. We encourage submissions that highlight a multitude of voices, imaginations, and perspectives through creative methods, illuminating the entanglements between food and communities in the pursuit of food justice. These studies may illustrate various interactions between different social groups, human and more-than-human agents, and cultural, ecological, and political dynamics at different scales to create alternative networks.

Potential topics for case studies may span various levels of the food cycle, including but not limited to:

• Land-rootedness and agroecology

• Social and environmental care in food production

• Harvesting and conservation practices

• Fermentation and traditional food processing

Read more ...

Our colleague Ph.D. student Ginevra Montefusco, who is carrying out outstanding research on Mediterranean cities and food (between Naples and Tangier), will hold a seminar on gendering food geographies, in conversation with Prof. Chiara Rabbiosi and her students within the course unit "Space, Place and Mobility". The seminar will take place on the 16th October 2024, at 2.30 pm in Aula AIS2, Palazzo del Capitanio, Padova. 

Ginevra is a passionate researcher who has worked on definitions and experiences of the "margin" in the city of Turin, on women-led urban agroecological food systems in the project "Gaza Foodways", and is now focusing on food and spatial injustice, Mediterranean cities, urban food sovereignty and agroecology, visual and participatory methods, decolonial and feminist approaches.

Prof. Anna Mdee (University of Leeds) will hold a lecture titled "Doing Fieldwork in Tanzania: Issues at Stake" at the University of Padua on the 23rd September 2024. 

Prof. Mdee is an anthropologist interested in aid and development as a political and cultural practice. Her research tends to take a critical reflective practice approach in particular on how to manage natural resources (primarily water), and how to reduce vulnerability through improved livelihoods. She has mainly conducted research in Tanzania.

The lecture will take place at MobiLab2, Palazzo Wollemborg, in Via del Santo, 26 - Padova, at 4.30 p.m. 

Our team will be holding a panel in this year's SeSaMO's Conference in Cagliari (3 - 5 October 2024). In our panel, we will be exploring, along with panelists Prof. Gabriele Proglio and Ms. Fidaa Abuhamidiya, multi-sited research. By bringing our own research experiences in dialogue with theirs, we aim to discuss how practicing multi-sited research can support critical and decolonial perspectives on methodology, epistemology, fieldwork and definitions of "areas" and geographies of the Mediterranean.  

The full program is available at the following link: https://www.sesamoitalia.it/xvi-convegno-sesamo/ 

FoCE's team participated in the Vth edition of the annual conference organized by the Società di Studi Geografici. This year the main focus was on heritage-making processes: how to understand them, what they can create, and which are the transformations they produce. 

The team participated with two presentations. In the first one (during the panel on "Food and heritage making processes") the group presented the research project of FoCE. This presentation offered the occasion for the research team to reflect together on how the heritage-making processes participate in fashioning the different study cases: it was an important moment where some common lines were drawn and where FoCe's project was communicated to the Italian geographical community. 

The second presentation was a proposal composed jointly by the two researchers of the team working in Morocco: Ginevra and Beatrice. The panel was "Sea and heritage making" and they were reflecting on how the heritage-making processes impact their fields and change the relationship with the environment, its meanings, and the practices of the people they are working with. It was the first time that two study cases of the project offered the opportunity to create a common reflection: we will continue to develop occasions where this is possible since it has been a very fertile moment of reflection and sharing :)

On 27th and 28th June FoCe's team will participate at the Vth edition of "Geografia e...". This edition revolves around "Geografia e Patrimonio". The FoCE's team will participate in two panels. 

In the panel "Il cibo nei processi di patrimonializzazione e di sviluppo locale. Pratiche, narrazioni, tensioni" the team will present FoCE project within a discussion on the relation between heritage-making and local development. 

In the panel "Mare e patrimonio" Ginevra Montefusco e Beatrice Ferlaino will present their initial reflections on the research period in Morocco. They will focus on how local communities in Tangeri and Sidi Bounuar build intangible heritage on fishing practices and knowladges. 

On the 24th of May we continued with the second meeting of our workshop at the Department of Geography (University of Padua). 

Professor Alessio Surian led an interactive session on group dynamics and visual methodologies, with a special focus on photovoice. The researchers also had the opportunity to discuss these issues and their positionalities in relation to the different fieldworks and local interlocutors.

The workshop was very stimulating. It made it possible to consolidate the research team and to develop common reflections and themes. 

The team agreed on the need for further meetings on methodological issues in the future.

On the 22nd of May we kick-started a two-day workshop on Photovoice and visual methodologies at Campus Luigi Einaudy (University of Turin). 

The FOCE team and some external researchers met with Professor Elisa Bignante. She led the participants in exercises and discussions on photovoice and photo elicitation. 

The workshop was a first step in the collective exploration of one of the most important methods of the FOCE research project. It also allowed the team to network with other researchers working on similar topics.