The Lab is organised around five main sets of activities.
1. Collective study and writing in Turin
On the basis of our program of work (see About), the Lab aims to nurture and expand our collective capacity to think critically around themes of habitability, race, urbanity and related struggles. Our work will take the form of reading and discussion groups in Turin and online. In certain cases, our conversation will germinate in individual and collective interventions in the fields of Urban Studies, Human Geography, Anthropology, as well as in selected non-academic outlets.
A list of all publications generated through our research is available here.
2. Lecture series and conferencing
The Beyond Inhabitation Lab Seminar Series is a set of high-profile interventions that will take place both online and in-person, in Turin. The seminar series comprises around seven events per year, three during spring and three during autumn. The seminars are open to all interested attendees and will be recorded and made publicly available in our Archive.
The lab will also have consistent participation in conferences and events in the fields of geography, sociology, anthropology and urban studies. We will continue to call for papers, and all those interested in engaging with the lab and its projects are encouraged to submit abstracts.
Find out more about our Seminar Series on our events page, and check out our YouTube channel for recordings.
3. Extended working groups
Extended Working Groups are an experimental practice of thinking, writing and working together aimed at expanding both our repertoire of academic practices and forms of meaningful engagement with scholars from different geographies and disciplinary fields. Building upon our experiences of online engagement and collective discussion and writing, the idea is to use online platforms to bring together scholars of otherwise divergent disciplinary backgrounds around a single notion or topic of interest, regardless of career stage. Online meetings are used to workshop novel notions and concepts based on each scholars’ trajectory and disciplinary background in playful ways, simply asking what does that specific notion entail in their own work and what do they deem important to consider when thinking about it? The goal is to facilitate new interpretations and insights of established concepts and terms from radically different perspectives
We will announce the availability to join future working groups in due course.
4. Visiting programme
Our visiting programme offers an opportunity to scholars and activists to spend some time with us in Turin, Italy, in the beautiful setting of the Castello del Valentino.
We are interested in having visiting scholars looking to apply for major European funding schemes – such as the Marie-Curie and the ERC – using DIST and the Lab as their main host institution. Because the Polytechnic of Turin is a public athenaeum, within a public university system, our focus is not on grant capture per-se. Rather, we aim to solidify, expand and provide a future to our collaborative work by working with cognate critical scholars in the field of urban and housing studies, who might see opportunities in working with us in Turin. Our visiting programme will offer interested scholars the possibility to work on their grant applications with us, to refine their ideas, and develop their approach, both remotely and in person in Turin (for a period of 3-4 weeks).
If you are interested in visiting us, get in touch here.
5. Beyond Inhabitation Urban School
Our signature 2024-2025 Urban Studies Summer School, co-organised with the Urban Transitions Hub (Lisbon) was a major international event. We have selected 15 participants from more than 85 applicants and provided high-profile keynotes and engagement. You can read about the event in Turin here, and the one in Lisbon here.
We will announce further Lab Schools in due course.