Lab on Area studies for Sustainability Transformations (LAST)

Photo credits: Daniele Brombal, China (2009-2010).

Roots and vision

This Lab stems from the professional experience and personal stories of a group of researchers and practitioners, concerned for the relentless loss of biological and cultural richness in the Anthropocene era. Along with systems thinking, we trace the roots of this crisis in extractive, ego-centric mental models that for centuries have been shaping cultural, socioeconomic, and political structures.

Against this background, our goal is to unearth the potential of language-based area studies to comprehend and nurture sustainability transformations. Area studies are a meaningful platform to research and redefine values, world-views, and institutions shaping social-ecological systems. As such, this field of study can provide meaningful contributions to the ongoing relational turn of sustainability science.

Towards this end, we intend to leverage methodological, intellectual, and ethical features rooted in the practice of area studies:

  1. the openness to inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches;
  2. the centrality of context and place – a tool to challenge placeless, one-fits-all recipes for development;
  3. the ethical and emotional attachment to places we study and live in – an attitude which can nurture a caring attitude, as with any place we consider home.

Calls and opportunities

  • Next June LAST & DeColonize are going to host the panel "Pastoralist communities in the glocal world. Towards protecting the historical legacy of common resources conservation in the Anthropocene" at the 2023 IASC Commons Conference in Nairobi. For more information, look up the abstract of our panel at the conference website or drop an email to panel chair Ali Razmkhah at  ali.razmkhah@unive.it. Submission deadline is December 12.
  • LAST members Marc Foggin and Daniele Brombal invite contributions to the special issue of the journal Suatainability, titled "The Roles of Culture and Values in Sustainable Development". Detailed information about submissions and the editorial process can be found at the special issue webpage.

Ongoing research

The Lab is organized in two trans-disciplinary clusters, one focusing on eco-linguistics and the other on political ecologies of Asia and Africa.

Eco-linguistics cluster 

The eco-linguistics cluster was launched in early 2022. Its goal is to contribute to our understanding of how language and discourses impact on environmental perception and decision-making. Members of this cluster are developing a framework of ecolinguistics analysis, applicable to Chinese texts employed in environmental impact assessments and in sustainability reporting.

Political ecology cluster 

The political ecology cluster encompasses projects exploring alternatives to mainstream, extractivist patterns of development. A considerable part of these activities focus on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – a large China-led infrastructural scheme spanning throughout Eurasia and Africa, epitomizing current trends of development-driven biological and cultural diversity loss.

Photo credits: Daniele Brombal, China (2009-2010).

Collaboration and synergies

The Lab benefit from the wisdom and experience of a large network of people working within academia, the non-governmental, and consultancy sectors. At present, we collaborate closely with members of the ICCA Consortium, the EJ Atlas project at ICTA Barcelona, the Re-Imaginary Collective, and of the University College London (UCL) China Centre.

At UNIVE, the Lab has been operating in synergy with the Marco Polo Centre on Global Europe Asia Connections (MaP), the CHINGREEN project, the Ecolinguistics for Green Transitions PON project, as well as with the PhD programme in Asian and African Studies, and the community of students and faculty established around our MA in Environmental Humanities.

The Lab runs on a series of ad-hoc national and EU funding, provided by the Ca’ Foscari regular budget, the MIUR Departments of Excellence program, the EU MSCA actions, the National Operative Programme on Research and Innovation, and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP).

Volunteering, internship work, and unusual collaborations play a vital role as well: if you are interested in contributing, feel free to contact the Lab Coordinator at  daniele.brombal@unive.it.

Photo credits: Daniele Brombal, China (2009-2010).

Activities and events

2023

 

2022

Outputs

Cui & Brombal. From resistance to transformation – Exploring the transformative potential of environmental resistance practices.Philosophy and Social Criticism 49, 5, 2023

People

Lab Coordinator

Ecolinguistics cluster
  • Sergio Conti, Researcher, Roma Tre University
  • Pui Yiu Szeto, Researcher, UNIVE
  • Laura Locatelli, PhD Candidate, UNIVE
  • Valeria Carla Cavezzali, MA Student, UNIVE
Political Ecology cluster
  • Marc Foggin, Director, Plateau Perspectives; Research Associate, University of British Columbia
  • Giulia Dal Maso, MSCA fellow, UNIVE and National University of Singapore (projetc: CHINGREEN)
  • Mengmeng Cui, Research fellow, UNIVE; Phd candidate, Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa (project: Social-Ecological Transformations along the Belt and Road Initiativet)
  • Kesang Thakur, Phd candidate, UNIVE
  • Ali Razmkhah, Phd candidate, UNIVE; Regional Coordinator at CENESTA & ICCA Consortium
  • Anastasiia Rudkovska, BA student, University College London (UCL)
  • Daniela Del Bene, Post-Doc, Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB)

Last update: 14/02/2024