Politics of Hope for the Enjoyment of the Sea
Dal 06/11/2025 ore 15.00 al 07/11/2025 ore 15.00
Naples
Maschio Angioino - Castel Nuovo, Event Room (November 6th)
Corso Vittorio Emanuele 4 (November 7th)
On 6-7 November 2025, Naples will host the international conference Politics of Hope for the Enjoyment of the Sea, jointly organized by the Institute for Research on Innovation and Services for Development (Cnr Iriss) and the AESOP Thematic Group Public Spaces and Urban Cultures.
The two-day initiative, developed within the Erasmus+ project PS-U-GO – Education in Living Labs: Participatory Skills for Sustainable Urban Governance, will serve as the Local Multiplier Event of the Urban Living Lab Naples (ULL Naples), showcasing its main outcomes.
Coordinated by Stefania Ragozino (Cnr Iriss), the PS-U-GO Urban Living Lab Naples unfolded between February and October 2025 as an experimental process of collaboration among researchers, students, local communities, enterprises and public institutions. Through participatory design and mutual learning, the Lab explored new approaches to reclaiming enjoyment of the sea and selecting places on which it is urgent to be proactive and change something.
Among the highlights of the first day, hosted at the Maschio Angioino – Castel Nuovo, is the Guest Lecture by Professor Sophie Watson (Open University, London), Why does water matter to the everyday cultures and practices of city dwellers? The lecture will invite participants to reflect on how water shapes urban life, social relations, and collective imaginaries.
Building on these reflections, the roundtable Co-Producing Hope through the Enjoyment of Waters, moderated by Tihomir Viderman (BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, AESOP TG PSUC), will bring together voices from academia, local governance, and civic initiatives, including Paolo Landri (Cnr Iriss Director), Gabriella Esposito De Vita (Cnr Iriss), Valentina Rossi (Cnr Iriss), Lorenzo Lodato (Lido Pola Urban Commons), Maura Striano (Naples City Council), Anna Terracciano (University of Naples Federico II), Raffaele Vaccaro (Nisida Environment), and Sophie Watson (Open University, London).
Within this context, Stefano Cuntò (University of Naples Federico II) will present the collective mapping for the enjoyability of the Neapolitan coast, developed within the Urban Living Lab Naples, highlighting the spatial imaginaries of access and care for the waterfront. The session will include the documentary on PS-U-GO ULL Naples introduced by Lorenzo Lodato (Lido Pola Urban Commons) that, starting from the Committee Mare Libero origins, captures the voices, experiences, and collaborative practices that have animated the Living Lab.
On the following day, a Neapolitan Coast Mobile Workshop led by the Committee Mare Libero Napoli will offer participants an experiential engagement with the coastal spaces and communities that have served as a living field of inquiry and co-design for the Urban Living Lab Naples.
Conceptually, the initiative draws on the idea of hope as a collectively mobilized resource, one that holds together utopian aspirations and practical negotiations in the making of urban life (Appadurai, 2007). Within this perspective, the Politics of Hope points toward tangible processes of social transformation rooted in everyday practices of care, cohabitation, and creativity, resonating with the “practice turn” in contemporary social theory (Schatzki et al., 2001).
These ideas find a vivid expression in Naples, where local movements such as Mare Libero Pulito e Gratuito and the Urban Commons Network have turned the reclaiming of access to the sea into both a symbolic and material act of democratic participation. Through this lens, the Urban Living Lab Naples has worked to bridge grassroots experiences and institutional learning, exploring how collective imagination and situated knowledge can inform inclusive and sustainable urban governance.
Selected references
Appadurai, A. Hope and Democracy. Public Culture. 2007, 19(1), 29–34, https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-2006-023
Schatzki, T. R., Knorr Cetina, K., & von Savigny, E. (2001). The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. Routledge.
Organizzato da:
CNR - Istituto di Ricerca su Innovazione e Servizi per lo Sviluppo
AESOP Thematic Group Public Spaces and Urban Cultures
Referente organizzativo:
Stefania Ragozino
CNR - Istituto di Ricerca su Innovazione e Servizi per lo Sviluppo
stefania.ragozino@cnr.it
Modalità di accesso: ingresso libero
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