I am Elisa Privitera, a Ph.D. student in Evaluation and Mitigation of Urban and Land Risks at the Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture at the University of Catania. In addition, I am a member of the LabPEAT, Laboratory for the Environmental and Ecological Design at the University of Catania (Italy).
As SEND Erasmus fellow, I had spent a period of research from 15th April 2019 to 15th July 2019 at the Environmental Humanities Laboratory (EHL) at the Division of History of Science, Technology, and Environment at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology of Stockholm. During this period my supervisor has been Prof. Marco Armiero and I have done the following educational, cultural and professional experiences:
– I have collaborated with the EHL for the daily activities of research, such as the lab meetings almost each Thursday, the CLISEL project and the Occupy Climate Change project. In particular, I have deepened a series of cases-study regarding the effect of the environmental change on the mobilization of population in the world. I have gathered and organized data, I have created map and file excell. Also, I have been the author of two case-studies for the GeoArchive of CLISEL project.
In particular I was author and co-author of the following cases study:
– Privitera, E. (2019). The contamination and transformation of landscapes in Gela, Sicily
– I have been involved in the several ongoing activities carried out by the components of the Division, such as Higher Seminars.
– Together with Marco Armiero, I have deepened the Toxic Bios project. Toxic Bios is a public environmental humanities project that aims to co-produce, gather, and make visible stories of contamination and resistance, by using the methodology of storytelling. In particular, these stories have been collected all over the world, especially in Europe and also in Brazil. In particular, I have done a literature review in order to explore and learn more about the topics of environmental justice, climate change, migration, and toxic autobiographies. By using a post-disciplinary approach, my aim has been to apply the Toxic Bios methodology to the urban and environmental planning field, with a specific application in contaminated areas due to the industrialization. Also, on the role of the Toxic Bios in the urban planning studies, together with Prof. Marco Armiero and Prof. Filippo Gravagno, we have written a paper titled “The Toxic Biographies and the “Small Data” from an Italian petrochemical town (Gela, Sicily)”. This paper has been presented during the City Futures IV Conference organized by EURA in Dublin from 20 to 22 June 2019 (http://cityfutures2019.com/).
In particular, on the 21st of June, I have presented the paper and I have received several interesting inputs, questions, and
comments on it. The paper has been already submitted to the Conference committee but it has not yet been published in the conference proceedings.
– I have written an article in English for the Division Blog on the research experience in Sweden.
Finally, it is consistent noting that that thanks to the SEND Erasmus programme the scientific relationship between the LabPEAT – Laboratory for the Ecological and Environmental Design at the University of Catania (Italy) and the Environmental Humanities Laboratory at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology of Stockholm have been strengthened.
Elisa Privitera, Ph.D. Student at University of Catania.
About the author