I investigate the intersection between gender, race, sexuality and Western political imaginaries of the environment. I am currently focusing on two research strands. First, I examine the recent scholarly and activist resurgence of the commons amid the intensification of socio-ecological injustices. Second, I explore cultural and political practices that challenge gendered and racialized tropes in mainstream environmentalism.
Once dismissed as tragedy, the commons have been reactivated as form of self-governance that provides alternatives to varied forms of extractive capitalism. My book The Commons Reimagined. Feminist and Decolonial Perspectives (in preparation) focuses on under-explored histories of “common use” and contemporary activist practices in Europe and Latin America that engage nonhuman beings as actors with whom negotiating modes of being-in-common. Combining speculative approaches with historical analysis and contemporary case studies, I complicate prevalent scholarship that considers the commons as the product of the interaction between active human collectives and inert resources. Ultimately, The Commons Reimagined argues for a reframing of the concept that challenges binary distinctions between subjects and objects, labor and energy, production and reproduction.
My newer project considers the affinities and divergences between contemporary feminist and youth climate movements on the terrain of socio-ecological reproduction. Focusing on Italy, I am interested in the limits and possibilities of processes of cross-fertilization through which these movements have been experimenting with the contestation and reorganization of dominant social and ecological relations.
I have written essays on the commons, the politics of the Anthropocene, the nexus between race and species, and the rights of nature.
An updated list of publications is available here.
This is a selection of recent publications:
