FIELD TRAINING SCHOOL AND RESEARCH SEMINAR
URBAN RESEARCH: THEORY AND METHODS
Montecatini Terme, Tuscany, Italy, 21-27 July 2023
This 7-day Field Training School brought together postgraduate students and postdoctoral scholars engaged in research in urban settings and in empirically-grounded analysis. The primary aim was to train junior scholars in the ‘art’ of conducting ethnographic fieldwork and develop the link between ethnographically-based analysis and social theory.
The School, hosted by the International Urban Symposium-IUS, was organized by Italo Pardo and Giuliana B. Prato in collaboration with an international group of senior scholars from the University of Kent, UK (Italo Pardo, Giuliana B. Prato), City University of London, UK (Gary Armstrong, James Rosbrook-Thompson), University of St Etienne, France (Michel Rautenberg), Tel Aviv University, Israel (Liora Sarfati), Delhi University, India (Subhadra Channa), Brooklyn College-CUNY, USA (Jerome Krase).
The Teaching Seminars focused on methodological and theoretical debates. Drawing on the teaching staff’s wide range of ethnographic and theoretical expertise, the discussions addressed interrelated topical issues ― specifically, governance, stereotype and stigma; legitimacy and legitimation; informality; urban diversity and resilience; sport mega-events; violence and risk; aging; urban protest; vernacular landscape, public space and heritage.
The School was attended by PhD students and post-doctoral scholars from Bangladesh, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Poland, South Korea, Switzerland, Sweden, Ukraine, UK.
Targeted Observational Field Trips, on which participants reported at length, supplemented the in-class work.
The School concluded with one full-day Research Seminar during which junior scholars presented their own research papers and engaged in academic debate benefiting from expert feedback from the teaching staff.
The interactive learning environment encouraged productive discussion on the rationale and practices of traditional and new research methods and mainstream debates.
Social events benefited from the centrality of the location and its world-renowned SPA iconic establishments.
We are pleased to announce that Erin Lynch was later invited to serve as Book Review Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Urbanities-Journal of Urban Ethnography.
Publications. Mia Jaatsi’s paper was later revised and published in the edited volume Forms of Inequality and the Legitimacy of Governance, Vol. 1 (Eds I. Pardo & G.B. Prato, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). A chapter by Erin Lynch has been published in the volume Ethnographies of Urban Heritage (Eds G.B. Prato & M. Mollica, March 2026). Other selected seminar papers are under revision for publication.
The Venue: Hotel Corallo, Montecatini Terme, Italy
