Member Profiles

Francesca's research explores contemporary rural changes, challenges and responses in the global South (Brazil and China) and in peripheral areas of the global North (Italy). Her research has three main trajectories: firstly, by using assemblage theory, it explores the connections between rural development and globalization to investigate the related socio-economic and environmental changes; secondly, it investigates how communities address global challenges such as food security and water supply; and thirdly, drawing upon utopianism, it studies how communities respond and engage in counter-cultural experimentations to overcome some of the contemporary issues and create spaces of sustainability and wellbeing. Since 2012, Francesca has been collaborating with the shamanic intentional community of Terra Mirim (Brazil), organising a series of public events about communal living and shamanism and supporting their recent mobilisation against the construction of a landfill in a protected area of the Atlantic Forest in the Metropolitan Region of Salvador (Bahia).