I’m Ilaria and I am collaborating since a few weeks with Edgeryders in coordinating the Earth OS, our very recently named environment unit [EDIT].
I’m an Italian geographer, based for a long time in Milan area and now wondering about move to a new place to call home. My main field of study is cognitive geography, especially how emotions are related to our sense of place and how the embodied experience of places shapes our cognition of them, and doing that with a phenomenological approach.
Moreover, I’ve been working for the last ten years in environmental communication and journalism, also co-authoring a book on circular economy, trying to figure out the best way to involve people in taking care of our future.
I’m very excited to be here and can’t wait to meet more members of the community!
(Here is a picture of @noemi and I on a very uncommon workday)
The new unit you are part of now will find its name soon,
I’m happy you are here from the early days of something new, and may we have many more unusual work days walking around in maritime ports, as in the pic above.
I wonder if cognitive geography also looks into how food contributes to the idea of space and appropriation of new cultures. This is a very telling story…
As for your search of a home home, you might enjoy this
Thank you @noemi! I’m so happy to work with you and have the opportunity to see the very beginning of something I think will be the source of a lot of passionate work and thrilling achievements
Well, maybe cognitive geography will look at it from a different perspective. It’s more about how we perceive the space, generally speaking. But there are a lot of studies about cross-cultural cognition/perception/experience of place/space in which researchers analyse some cultural references connected to place. In the case you linked, for example, the Syrian costume to live, gather and meet in public space collides to the German one - or maybe it’s more a matter of incertitude towards a new country legislation, that can be seen stressful, especially if you are a refugee - and the interdiction to actively and socially perform the public space could affect the cognition of a new space. So I would look at it in that perspective.
But still food is a sensuos experience and it relates to instinct and memories: as Proust perfectly described it with the “madeleine episode”, food can instantly bring you in different time and place and it is associated with emotions. So maybe food can be used as a tool through which having an embodied experience of a place.
Well, I’m just brainstorming right now.
And thank you also for the second story: I’ve been moving a lot in my life, even if mainly in Italy, so starting again is something I’m used to and that I enjoy. Moreover, being a nerdy geographer makes it always an excuse to better undestand the the relationships between the people and their environment. So… let’s see where I’ll belong in the future
