TRANSALP PROJECT - LONG-LASTING TRANSITION AND APPLIED RESEARCH IN ALPINE AREAS: COMPARED APPROACHES BETWEEN FRANCE, SWITZERLAND, AND ITALY

The TransAlp project has recently won a 2-year grant from the Parisian Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, as an “emergent research" project. The idea of the project is to explore Alpine governance models in order to understand how to better respond to the ecological and institutional crisis we are facing.

TransAlp works in a comparative and microanalytical way on three different Alpine contexts, respectively Switzerland, France, and Italy, aiming at facilitating active citizenship and disseminating good practises among areas which are facing similar challenges and changes.

The project also intends to deeply explore and draw up concepts, methodologies, and tools for the participatory design of the ecological transition in Alpine communities.

For this reason, a permanent working group, the TransAlpLab, is meant to surround and support researchers’ équipe in an ongoing formation and training and in mutual education. After that, some of the participants might also be involved in fieldwork research to put all that was learnt in place, to accomplish the expected comparative approach of the TransAlp project.

TransAlpLab is, firstly, a space for discussion and reflection on the role that social applied research can have in processing and shaping responses for ecological transition and social justice, also contributing to give a stronger and longer range to the social research, way beyond the project scope and aims.

Ideally, the 10 to 12 people who will constitute the team are people interested in applied anthropology, in participatory methodology, and in community empowerment.

A plus and inevitable benefit for the TransAlpLab will be the presence of the Scientific Committee constituted ad hoc for the project with the international relevance experts in history, alpine cultures, and institutions. Italian, French and English are the languages of the course: every participant is expected to understand at least two of them; approximately the appointments will occur every two weeks, hosted online by academies’ platforms. At the end, the working papers of the members of the TransAlpLab group will be published into a collective book on concepts and methods of applied anthropology and ecological transition.

The research équipe is composed of Gabriele Orlandi (coordinator, Aix-Marseille University), Valentina Porcellana (University of Aosta Valley), Viviana L. Toro Matuk (L.U.de.S Lugano Campus).

The Scientific Committee is formed by:

⚫ Dionigi ALBERA, CNRS (FR)

⚫ Letizia BINDI, University of Molise (IT)

⚫ Elisabetta DALL’Ò, University of Turin (IT)

⚫ Luigi LORENZETTI, University of Italian Switzerland (CH)

⚫ Jon MATHIEU, University of Lucerne (CH)

⚫ Pier Paolo VIAZZO, University of Turin (IT)

⚫ Roberta Clara ZANINI, University of Turin (IT)

Here is an indicative programme of the meetings (the definitive programme is currently being finalised):

⚫ jan 2022 - introduction to TransAlp project, presentation of issues and tools for and ethnography of participatory governance processes

⚫ jan 2022 - Letizia BINDI - a kaleidoscopic approach: critical ethnography on territorial regeneration

⚫ jan 2022 - Elisabetta DALL’Ò - transition policies in the face of climate change: a comparison on both sides of the Alps

⚫ feb 2022 - Jon MATHIEU - Alpine uniqueness: between representation, history, and environment

⚫ feb 2022 -Roberta Clara ZANINI - service and welfare anthropology in marginalised and mountain areas

⚫ mar 2022 - Dionigi ALBERA - beyond ethnography, beyond micro-history: milestones for a thick, contextual, controlled, and reflexive comparison in the Alpine space

⚫ mar 2022 - collective seminar: practices and methods of collaborative ethnography

⚫ mar 2022 - collective seminar: the extended case method as a public research practice

⚫ apr 2022 - Pier Paolo VIAZZO - demographic dynamics and forms of social life in Western Alps

⚫ apr 2022 - Luigi LORENZETTI - State and land ownership in the Alpine area

⚫ may 2022 - collective seminar: what ethics for applied research?

⚫ may 2022 - collective seminar: instruments/tools of consultation and negotiation between stakeholders

⚫ jun-jul 2022 - EASA Applied Anthropology Network Satellite Event: why upland communities need anthropologists? residential seminar, a three-day to CASA – Center for Anthropology Health and Environment, in Brosso, Valchiusella (Turin)

(costs of travel and stay will be covered by the projects’ funds).

If interested, please contact [email protected], attaching a CV and a cover letter on interests, experiences, research areas and issues of interest connected with TransAlpLab. Use either Italian, English, or French. Deadline: 23rd December 2021