SSI - School of International Studies

Conference / Meeting

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Protesta in piazza per il clima

The Past and Present of Climate Activism

Contestation, Democracy, Change
11 June 2026 - 12 June 2026, start time 09:00 - 16:00
School Of Innovation, Via Tommaso Gar, 16/2, Trento
Organizer: School of International Studies
Target audience: Students, PhD students, Research Fellows, Researchers, Postdoctoral Researcher, UniTrento faculty
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Protesta in piazza per il clima
  • research

Programme 

Thursday 11th June

9.30 - 10.00 

Registration

 

10:00-10:30

Welcome & introduction to the RETOOL project

Prof. Stefano Schiavo (director of SSI), 

Prof. Louisa Parks

Prof. Aron Buzogány

Prof. Umberto Tulli

 

10:30-12:30 

Panel 1: Environmental and climate activism in Europe: historical perspectives

Angela Santese - “Whales, Protests, and Organization: Greenpeace’s Transition during the Seventies

Roberto Tesei - “Anti-Nuclear Resistance in Germany. The Gorleben Case between Grassroots Mobilization and Civic Engagement (1977-2020)”

Gabriele Siracusano - “A New Environmental Internationalism against Imperialism: Italian Radical-Left Movements, Ecological struggle and the Global South (1979-1994)”

Vito Saracino - “Intersections of Environmental Activism and Democratic Innovation: A Historical-Sociological Analysis of Climate Movements in Puglia, Italy”

Lorenza Moretti – “Tracing Ecofeminism in Italy (1970s-1990s)”

 

12.30-13.30 Lunch 

 

13.30-15.30 

Panel 2: Climate justice movements and state contestation

Elumala Prema, Shyam Sundar, Ragul OV– “Courts, Climate, and Citizens – Environmental Justice in a Time of Crisis

Sandra Pues and Kim Bouwer – “Climate Protests, Injunction Enforcement, and the Loss of Narrative”

Alessandro Sciullo, Joana Mundó Olivé, Irene Ji Mata, Priscila Rivera, Flavio Ghilardi – “Defending and innovating democracy in time of socio-ecological crisis. Enabling and hindering factors for civic and political participation”

Francesco Magno – “The different facets of Bulgarian environmental activism between late communism and early democratic transition”

 

15.30-16:00 Coffee Break 

 

16:00-18:00

Panel 3 - Culture and shared languages and practices of participation

Ananyaa Yadav – “From Epistemic Contestation to Democratic Emergency: Environmental Movements, Temporal Urgency, and the Politics of Legitimate Knowledge in European Climate Governance”

Aron Buzogany, Vlad Sudrea, Anna-Maria Krietemeyer, Rosa Unterweger – “Climate justice and emotions”

Alberto Manconi – “The Subjective Bifurcation of Care and Sacrifice: Organizational Split and Democratic Lessons from the XR–A22 Field”

Alejandro Ciordia – “Cultural models of climate contention: exploring the views of climate movement participants in Italy”

 

20.00 Social Dinner

 

Friday 12th June

9.00-11.00 

Panel 4 – Climate activism facing militarization, coloniality and democratic backsliding

Günseli Durmaz – “Moral Governance and the Criminalization of Activism in Turkey”

Claire Marie Beyet – “Environmental destruction as climate injustice: way, accountability, and democratic claims in Ukraine”

Jannatoul Ferdous – “Climate Activism at the Margins: Contestation, Justice, and Democratic Transformation through the Rohingya Experience”

Hajar Taha – “Militarism, Extraction, and Climate Democracy: A Postcolonial Ecofeminist Reading of Sahelian Environmental Politics”

 

11.00-11.15 Coffee Break

 

11.15-13.15

Panel 5 – The climate justice movement: mobilizations across time

Alexandra Budabin and Alexandra Tomaselli – “Lessons from Intersectional Strategies for Climate Activism by Indigenous Youth: From Vulnerability to Expanding Agency within Climate Governance”

Alice Ferro – “Becoming Political Entities: the National Pathway of Coordination”

Giuseppe Cugnata and Lorenzo Zamponi – “Demanding or Doing? Evolving Strategies, Outcomes, and Future Visions in the Italian Climate Movement”

Marco Pernarella – “Making transnationalism in and out of COPs. Networks, discourses, and temporalities in the transnational Climate Justice Movement (2019-2025)”

 

13.15-14.15 Lunch break 

 

14.15-16.15

Panel 6 – Prefiguration and grassroots transformation

Nadine Abdalla – “Mobilising Ecologies for Democratic Practices: Affect, Knowledge Production, and Community Engagement in Egypt”

Niccolò Bertuzzi – “The energy transition(s) in Catalonia, Corsica, and Sardinia: Between sufficiency, sustainability”

Pablo Lapuente Tiana – “Bringing Environmentalism Down to Earth: The Case of Earth Uprisings in France”

Dimitra Spatharidou – “Narrating Climate Justice in Greek Civil Society”

Júlia Čížová – “’Green-lighting the Greens’: Environmental Activism under Socialism in 1980s Slovakia”

 

16.15-17.00 Final wrap up and forward planning 

 

Speakers

Nadine Abdalla, Niccolò Bertuzzi, Kim Bouwer, Alexandra Budabin, Aron Buzogany, Júlia Čížová, Alejandro Ciordia, Giuseppe Alberto Cugnata, Alice Dal Gobbo, Sophie de Lede, Günseli Durmaz, Prema Elumalai, Jannatul Ferdous, Alice Ferro, Flavio Ghilardi, Şeyda Güdek-Gölçek, Vlad Surdea Hernea, Irene Ji Mata, Nina Koistinen, Anna-Maria Kreitmeyer, Rajavenkatesan Paravallur Ramadass Lalitha, Pablo Lapuente Tiana, Francesco Magno, Alberto Manconi, Lorenza Moretti, Joana Mundó Olivé, Louisa Parks, Marco Pernarella, Franka Pues, Priscila Rivera, Angela Santese, Vito Saracino, Annalisa Savaresi, Alessandro Sciullo, Dimitra Spatharidou, Hajar Taha, Roberto Tesei, Alexandra Tomaselli, Umberto Tulli, Rosa Unterwegger, Shyam Sundar Venkatesan, Dina Wahba, Ananyaa Yadav, Lorenzo Zamponi. 

 

Funding

The RETOOL project has received funding from the European Union's HORIZON EUROPE Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No 101132661.