SSI - School of International Studies

Conference / Meeting

Image
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 - 18:00
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
Image
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

Stefano Schiavo, University of Trento, director of the School of International Studies

Louisa Parks, University of Trento, RETOOL Project

Aron Buzogány, Boku University Vienna, RETOOL Project

Umberto Tulli, University of Trento, RETOOL Project

 

10.30-12.30 

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

Chair: Umberto Tulli

Angela Santese (University of Bologna) - “Whales, Protests, and Organization: Greenpeace’s Transition during the Seventies”

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

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

Lorenza Moretti (Sapienza University of Rome) – “Tracing Ecofeminism in Italy (1970s-1990s)”

 

12.30-13.30 Lunch 

 

13.30-15.30 

Panel 2: Climate justice movements and state contestation

Chair: Annalisa Savaresi

Elumala Prema, PRL Rajavenkatesan, Shyam Sundar, Ragul OV (Vellore Institute of Technology) – “Courts, Climate, and Citizens. Environmental Justice in a Time of Crisis”

Franka Pues and Kim Bouwer (University of Durham) – “Layers of Climate Contestation: Rethinking Success Through English Fracking Litigation”

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

Francesco Magno (University of Trento) – “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

Chair: Alice Dal Gobbo

Aron Buzogany, Vlad Surdea-Hernea, Anna-Maria Krietemeyer, Rosa Unterweger (Boku University Vienna) – “Climate justice and emotions”

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

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

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

 

20.00 Social Dinner

 

Friday 12th June

 

9.00-11.00 

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

Chair: Aron Buzogany

Günseli Durmaz (Niğde Ömer Halisdemir University) – “Moral Governance and the Criminalization of Activism in Turkey”

Jannatul Ferdous (Comilla University) – “Climate Activism at the Margins: Contestation, Justice, and Democratic Transformation through the Rohingya Experience”

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

Hajar Taha (Hassan II University) – “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

Chair: Louisa Parks

Alice Ferro (Scuola Normale Superiore) – “Becoming Political Entities: the National Pathway of Coordination”

Júlia Čížová (Slovak Academy of Sciences) – “’Green-lighting the Greens’: Environmental Activism under Socialism in 1980s Slovakia”

Giuseppe A. Cugnata and Lorenzo Zamponi (Scuola Normale Superiore) – “Demanding or Doing? Evolving Strategies, Outcomes, and Future Visions in the Italian Climate Movement”

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

 

13.15-14.15 Lunch

 

14.15-16.15

Panel 6 – Prefiguration and grassroots transformation

Chair: Alice Dal Gobbo

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

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

Dimitra Spatharidou (University of Macedonia/Holistic) – “Narrating Climate Justice in Greek Civil Society”

 

16.15-17.00 Final wrap up and forward planning 

 

 

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