Lectio Magistralis di Lorenza Fontana

DIST Newcomers is a meeting cycle organized by the Department on the occasion of the arrival of new colleagues, with the aim of sharing knowledge and fostering relationships between the different research and educational specializations that characterize the Department.

This event features Prof. Lorenza Fontana with a lecture entitled:

‘It’s Complicated’. Uneasy Answers to Easy Questions about Politics, Fire and More
"From ethnic politics and indigenous peoples struggle for land and self-determination, to the international law regulating child labour, to socio-environmental conflicts and the political dimensions of wildfires, this talk will move across a range of (apparently) unrelated topics in a search for answers to (apparently) simple questions. I will draw on key insights from my past and current research and retrace the steps of my professional and personal wanderings. I will focus in particular on my recent engagement with transdisciplinary debates on wildfires to highlight new ideas about the interaction between political dynamics and fire that will likely gain prominence as new climatic and geopolitical scenarios unfold. In a world that craves easy (and short) answers to corral complexity, uncertainty and transformation, I will advocate for the value of (longish) non-intuitive, sometimes unpopular, answers to apparently easy questions".

Lorenza Fontana is a full professor in political science at DIST since December 2023. She is a Carlo Alberto chair in politics and society at the Collegio Carlo Alberto in Turin and a Visiting Professor at the University of Glasgow. Lorenza held previous academic positions at the University of Glasgow, Newcastle University and the University of Sheffield in the UK, and Harvard University in the USA. Her research has addressed questions around the ethnic politics of socio-environmental conflicts, the domestic politics of human rights of vulnerable groups (indigenous peoples, domestic workers and working children), and, more recently, the contentious politics of wildfires. She is currently leading the 5-year ERC project FIREPOL The Politics of Wildfires. A Comparative Study of Norms, Power and Conflict in the Global South (2023-2028).
www.lorenzafontana.com

PROGRAM

Introduction
Andrea Bocco, Head of DIST
Lectio Magistralis
‘It’s Complicated’. Uneasy Answers to Easy Questions about Politics, Fire and More
Lorenza Fontana, full professor in political science at DIST
Musical Interlude
Simone Pavan, classic guitar

Registration for partecipation:

• https://forms.office.com/e/f0Z76f9DTE

For information: comunicazione.dist@polito.it