Donatella Gasparro

Donatella Gasparro is a PhD Candidate in Political Science & Sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore, and a research collaborator with the Institute of Environmental Sciences (ICTA-UAB) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain) within the project REAL – A Post-Growth Deal.

Before joining SNS, Donatella was a Research Associate & Lecturer in political ecology and rural geography at the Institute for Geography, University of Münster (Germany), and a Junior Lecturer in environmental sciences at the Institute for Environmental Sciences (CML), University of Leiden (The Netherlands). Donatella has a transdisciplinary background in both natural and critical social sciences: she holds a master’s degree in Political Ecology, Degrowth and Environmental Justice from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, a Master of Science in Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems from Wageningen University (The Netherlands) and a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Sciences from the University of Bari “Aldo Moro” (Italy).

Donatella’s current research interests sit at the intersection of critical agrarian studies, political ecology, materialist ecofeminism and degrowth. In her PhD project, with an engaged ethnographic approach, she focuses on subsistence-oriented socio-materialities (agriculture for self-consumption and social arrangements of reciprocity) that persist in remote rural areas of Southern Italy, and the relationship of these phenomena with environmental justice struggles.

Donatella is also active in the dissemination of degrowth, political ecology and ecofeminism through talks, lectures and broad-audience writing in Italy and Europe. She is part of the editorial collective of the Italian degrowth quarterly “Quaderni della Decrescita” and has been active in a peasant agroecological association in the South of Italy for more than a decade.