As every PhD research, also my project has changed consistently over the time. The first time I came to the University of Leeds in 2010 I was an exchange student and after six months I remained thanks an as tutor teaching Italian: I discovered the campus (nothing comparable with Italy!) and the city and I loved both of them. I also really enjoyed the School of Geography and the teacher there: I found two teachers potentially available to supervise me and then I applied for a PhD program. And I was accepted! However, unfortunately, I was not good enough to seize an English scholarship, but, finished my second master in Italy, I got a small funding from the University of Udine (S.H.A.R.M. project) and I decided to return to Leeds, with Sara Gonzalez e Paul Chatterton as supervisors. My initial plan was to expand my Master Thesis research (available HERE) in which studied some institutional and grassroots groups from Leeds, comparing their approaches and impacts on the development of the city. The next step was to deepening the research, using Social Ecology as framework. After a while I understood that Leeds was not able to offer a good case study and then I searched for other possibilities: in Italy, Canada, Kurdistan, Rio de Janeiro … (looking back to these possibilities I have no idea how I could manage financially to do that…).
At the end the choice fall on Rio de Janeiro: my department is indeed part of an international research scheme that is funding the mobility towards some Latin American department and in Rio de Janeiro is based one of the few geographer working with Social Ecology, Marcelo Lopez De Souza who was very keen to accept my request. At the end of March 2013 I moved to Rio de Janeiro. I soon faced many different problems: a new “environment” (from my hometown Udine or Leeds to the metropolis of Rio de Janeiro), a new culture, the lack of contacts, finding a house. Moreover, one of the key problems was the language: despite my mother tongue is a Latin language and I previously did a Portuguese course at University of Leeds (thank you!), my language level was not sufficient. Till the end of May I focused on improving my language skill (I did a very intense course) and discovered the culture and the city. The initial plan was to work with two Sem-Teto occupations but, for various problems, I could not do that. I was quite demoralized when at the beginning of June everything happened… The increased of a ticket price in public transport ignited the movement and, in few weeks, it growth from few hundreds people to one million on the 20th of June. The account of the full story is long and complicated and this is not the place, for a good summary and interpretation see CrimethInc. Collective Part 1 and Part 2.
I acted as I know, as an activist and I started participating in the marches and all the public events. I joined the movement as independent, not hiding my role as a researcher and I joined the Forum de Luta Contra Aumenta da Passagem. In August I got back to Europe and I decided to change the focus of my research on the Forum. When I got back in Rio de Janeiro, end of September, the Forum has slowly died and I joined the Frente Indepentente Popular – FIP whose I had the chance to participate in its first meeting back in August. The final decision for my research is focusing on the Forum and the FIP, looking at them as part of the same wide movement and in continuity, understanding their differences and similarities, learning why the Forum stopped and the FIP rise. Time is running out for my research (PhD in UK is 3 years, usually the first is used for outlining the project, the second for fieldwork and the third to write up the thesis) and now I believe that I finally and happily found my case studies.
