Raffaele is a doctoral researcher studying the everyday experiences of industrial pollution and illness in fence-line communities in Italy and Taiwan. Funded by a Wellcome Trust Doctoral Studentship, his research is situated at the intersection of citizen science, political ecology and environmental justice. Raffaele holds a BA in Social Anthropology and Development Studies from SOAS, University of London and an MSc in Global Health from Taipei Medical University. He is currently undertaking a Secondment Fellowship at the United Nations Environment Programme. Prior to joining Oxford, he carried out research on gender equality in health at the World Health Organisation and the United Nations University ‒ International Institute for Global Health, and on Chinese migrants in the UK at Regent's University London.
DPhil topic
Raffaele's research is an ethnographic investigation into the lived experience of illness and activism across two marginalised communities severely affected by industrial pollution in Italy and Taiwan. His project questions how notions of 'environment' and 'justice' are co-produced as complex symbolic configurations assembled at the crossroads of historical, scientific, institutional and interpersonal trajectories. Understanding how these communities make sense of their polluted worlds is fundamental in order to grasp their political aspirations and self-collocation within local and global narratives of environmental justice. Raffaele's research responds to this call by generating new theoretical and methodological tools that can enable these communities to connect and participate in environmental justice debates at the global level.
