Public Engagement 2023-25

Walking is a way of observing that becomes an immersive experience of the city. It is an act of unveiling, capable of grasping, through urban metamorphoses, the signs of social and climatic change. It is also an act of rewriting, a tool for rethinking and designing urban space beyond established routes. Walking with the city and its inhabitants, human and more-than-human, is at once a political and poetic, social and intimate, critical and creative gesture. As a social practice, walking activates new communities in motion that are aware of the transformative potential of their own steps.

WALC! is an invitation to walk together in our cities.

The exhibition WALC! is the outcome of the project Walking Landscapes of Urban Cultures, which involved the Universities of Bologna, Padua, and Milan Bicocca. Drawing on three different disciplinary perspectives, literary studies, cultural geography, and urban sociology, the research groups coordinated by Filippo Milani, Giada Peterle, and Luca Daconto investigated the complexity of urban walking cultures through transdisciplinary methodologies.

The exhibition itinerary winds its way through the transdisciplinary restitutions of the three research units, which have interpreted their cities as living laboratories for listening to, recounting, and imagining the cultures of urban walking.

Using different languages, each city contributes to the unveiling of new perspectives for those who walk in the city and observe landscapes in constant transformation.

Between Geography and Art

The Padua research unit developed urban itineraries through an open dialogue between geography, art, and creative languages. In collaboration with the Creativity Area of the Progetto Giovani Office of the Municipality of Padua, the Padua research unit launched MAR (Mobile Art Residency), an artist residency that led to the permanent installation of public artworks by Daniele Costa and Caterina Morigi in the train station area.

Together with photographer Marco Lumini, the research unit curated the project Sulla soglia, exhibited at San Gaetano Cultural Centre.

At the Museum of Geography, we present the results of a dialogue with illustrator and urban researcher Tânia A. Cardoso, whose work explores the poetics of everyday life, using graphic art to question and co-create the urban environment.

Exhibition venues

Altinate S. Gaetano Cultural Center – Exhibition | Via Altinate 71, Padua

Opening: January 16, 2026, at 6:00 p.m.

Duration: January 16-February 15

Free admission exhibition

Tuesday to Sunday | 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

On October 24th, the Geography Museum in Padua hosted a compelling book presentation titled ‘La città autistica’ (The Autistic City). The event, held from 16:30 to 18:00, featured author Alberto Vanolo from the University of Turin, with an introduction by Giada Peterle from our MoHu Centre. Elena Santi, the representative for Accessibility and Inclusion projects at CAM (University Center for Museums of the University of Padua), was also present at the event.

This presentation was part of the NaMUC – Narrative Mobilities of Urban Cultures seminar series, organised within the framework of the WALC – Walking Landscapes of Urban Cultures project. The Paduan unit of the WALC project (PRIN PNRR 2022, funded by the European Union’s NextGeneration EU initiative) is hosted at MoHu.

The event offered attendees a unique opportunity to explore the concept of ‘autistic cities’ and its implications for urban studies and planning. Vanolo’s work likely delves into how urban environments interact with and impact individuals on the autism spectrum, as well as how cities themselves might exhibit ‘autistic-like’ characteristics in their design and function.

This free-entry event not only showcased interdisciplinary research at the intersection of geography, urban studies, and disability studies but also highlighted the University of Padua’s commitment to fostering academic discussions on inclusive urban spaces.”

On November 26th, 2025, our Department hosted a compelling event titled “Moving with, and filming, female shepherds in Italy” as part of the “Space, Place and Mobility” course unit held by Chiara Rabbiosi within the Mobility Studies MA.

The highlight of the seminar was the screening of the film “In questo mondo” (In This World) by Anna Kauber, released in 2018. Kauber, the film’s director, presented her work which focuses on the lives and experiences of female shepherds in Italy. The film, shown with English subtitles, offered attendees a unique glimpse into a rarely explored aspect of rural Italian life.

The seminar provided valuable insights into themes of gender, rural livelihoods, and documentary filmmaking. It aligned well with the course’s focus on space and mobility, illustrating how these concepts intersect with traditional practices and gender roles in contemporary Italy.

The event, open to the public with prior registration, drew a diverse audience of students, academics, and external members interested in geography, gender studies, and Italian rural and food cultures. It successfully combined academic discourse with visual storytelling, making it an engaging and educational experience for all attendees.

This seminar was part of a broader European Union-funded initiative, PNRR – M4C2

PRIN PNRR 2022 – NextGenerationEU P20223SFMN – Postdevelopment geographies of Local Food Systems CUP: C53D23008730001.

On September 24th, at the Uferstudios in Berlin, our MoHu director Prof. Tania Rossetto gave a public lecture titled “Cartographic feelings of vulnerable geobodies: mobilising maps and mappings in post-Covid life”.

The event, open to the public, was hosted within a summer school entitled “Viral Atmosphere. Maneuvering the Affective Geographies of Pandemic and Health”, organized by Sung Joon Park (BNITM, Hamburg), Hansjörg Dilger (Free University, Berlin), Julia Hornberger (Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg), Bo Kyeong Seo (Yonsei University, Seoul), Nene Morisho (Pole Institute, Goma), and Jacqueline Häußler (BNITM, Hamburg).

Representing MoHu, our director explored the many ways in which the cartographic dimension was mobilized during the pandemic and how some behaviors with cartographic implications have migrated into the post-pandemic era, taking on new manifestations. The approach of humanistic mobilities, in this case linked to the cartographic theme, was useful in reflecting together with the audience on the shared legacy of the pandemic.

On September 12th, the screening of 3 selected documentaries for “Camera con Paesaggio” was held, a section of the Euganea Film Festival dedicated to the Landscape Videomaking laboratory, supported by our MobiLab, active at the Landscape Studies Degree Course.

Thanks to the work of professors Mauro Varotto, Marco Toffanin and Michele Trentini, the event highlighted the work of 3 short films:

Creating and recreating the homeland (8′) by Wang Yimei, Skibeach (13′) by Marco Toffanin and Michele Trentini, Via Melograno (7′) by Francesco Casari.

Euganea Film Festival has become a very consolidated stakeholder for the Landscape Studies Degree Course.

We see great potential in this collaboration because it involves our MoHu in its 3 missions: teaching, research and third mission.

From the teaching perspective, thanks to the Camera con Paesaggio section, the festival allows us to enhance the visibility of our students’ work from the degree course in Landscape Sciences. Students participate in the Landscape Videomaking Laboratory, also thanks to the equipment and software developed by our Laboratories. The best products have the opportunity to be presented at the festival.

But Euganea Film Festival also obviously stimulates our third mission, because it allows us to go beyond academic walls and get in touch with the territory, particularly addressing environmental sustainability issues, which is crucial both for the message that the Festival wants to convey to citizens and for the disciplines we study and teach at DiSSGeA.

This partnership with the Festival means a lot to us not only in terms of teaching and third mission, but also in the field of research. With this collaboration we nurture interest in film, in audiovisuals, as a method for scientific research in human and social sciences, a method that allows us to use alternative languages to interrogate the landscape, mobility, the environment, to explore its complexity and transformations, to find “new ways of looking”, which are always also “new ways of saying” materiality and the meaning of geographical space.

We are very grateful to all the personnel involved, to the laboratory professors, to our laboratory technicians, and above all to the students who put themselves out there every year.

On Saturday, May 17, 2025, our MoHu director Tania Rossetto participated as a jury member in the 2025 Association for European Transport Hackathon, which was held at the Padua office of NET Engineering company, one of our intersectoral partners. The Hackathon, dedicated to the theme “Sustainable tourism challenges and strategies in Italy”, engaged MA and PhD students, including Billy Adi Pamungkas from our Local Development MA and Francesco Zuccolo, from our PhD program in Historical, Geographical, and Anthropological Studies, in two exciting days of creative discussion and exchange with experts on the topics of transportation, infrastructure, and alternative mobilities for tourists. Being part of the jury was a valuable opportunity to expand our center’s networking activity in the extra-academic field with leading actors of mobility transformations in Italy.

One of our major collaborations with the Centre for the GeoHumanities at Royal Holloway University of London, namely the “Variations on mobility” Creative Commission, has produced creative outputs that are still on a journey and haven’t finished saying what they have to say.

The graphic novel, Memories. Notes and Maps of a Journey to the West (2023), co-authored by Ciaj Rocchi, Matteo Demonte (illustrators, video-makers, and comic artists) and Daniele Brigadoi Cologna (sinologist and sociologist of migrations), which originated from this collaboration and was supported by MoHu (and in particular by Giada Peterle and Tania Rossetto), was presented at the Museo delle Culture (MUDEC) in Milan on May 8, 2025, as part of the TRAVELOGUE: Storie di viaggi, migrazioni e diaspore series. 

Memories is an intense work that reinserts the history of Chinese migration to Italy within the broader migratory flow towards Europe in the 1920s. Through direct testimonies and an accurate reconstruction of events, the book narrates the journeys, challenges, and visions of the protagonists of this migration, offering a new historical and human perspective.

This event demonstrates how art-research collaborations are able to bring mobility research into contact with diverse audiences, continuing MoHu’s public engagement mission.

On April 4th, 2025, a group of Padua residents and students participated in an innovative “graphic walkshop” that combined walking through the city with creative drawing and writing exercises. The event, titled “Walking with the City,” was held by Tânia Cardoso and Giada Peterle as part of the Mohu-based Paduan unit of the WALC research project funded by the European Union (Walking Landscapes of Urban Cultures – Next Generation EU – PRIN PNRR 2022, Project code: P2022X5L8B, CUP: J53D2301655001).

The walkshop promoted an inclusive approach to co-producing knowledge about urban landscapes through movement and collective storytelling. “Rather than thinking of the walker as a solitary figure, we claim the act of walking as a generative social event, where more-than-human bodies, voices, and stories emerge together,” explained the organizers.

Participants gathered at Piazzale Stazione FS and embarked on a 5km barrier-free pathway through Padua. Along the way, they engaged in drawing exercises using notebooks, pens, markers and pencils to visually capture the narrative lines composing the city’s urban stories.

No prior graphic skills were required, making the walkshop accessible to all. By drawing while walking, participants were able to perceive their surroundings and document their everyday urbanscapes through an unusual creative lens.

The materials produced will be used for further research and dissemination purposes connected to the WALC project, which aims to study the walking landscapes of urban cultures from different disciplinary and social perspectives. A short comic-book story will be released starting from the collective storytelling experience of the graphic walkshop and inspired by participants voices.

Overall, the “Walking with the City” event provided Padua’s community with an innovative way to actively engage with and re-imagine their urban environment and mobile practices through an immersive, multi-sensory and narrative experience.

On April 4th, the University of Padua’s Museum of Geography (in collaboration with our MoHu Centre and other organisers) successfully hosted its contribution to the international “Night of Geography” event. The evening featured a unique walking tour titled “Paths of Peace and Nonviolence in Padua,” guided by Sergio Bergami of the International Movement for Reconciliation (MIR).

Participants embarked on a circular route through the city, encountering significant locations and individuals associated with peace initiatives. The walk provided a fresh perspective on Padua’s rich history of nonviolent activism and reconciliation efforts.

Upon returning to the museum, attendees were treated to a special viewing of the exhibition “The World in Hand: Travel Guides in the West from the Modern Age to Today.” Curators Gian Paolo Chiari and Sara Dotto were on hand to share fascinating stories and insights about the interconnected nature of travel throughout history.

The free event was organized by AIIG Veneto and the Museum of Geography – University of Padua. It was held in collaboration with the International Movement for Reconciliation (Padua section), the Mobilities & Humanities Center of the Department of Historical and Geographic Sciences and the Ancient World, and the Peace Human Rights International Cooperation Area of the Municipality of Padua.

On March 26th at the Horti Sallustiani in Rome, MoHu participated in NExTropolis – Evoluzioni urbane, an event promoted by NET Engineering company and dedicated this year to the theme of “construction sites that live with the city”. Our director Tania Rossetto gave a talk co-authored with Giada Peterle. The event was attended by representatives from the business world, public administrations, professions, and academic and non-academic research, who were all engaged in exploring construction sites that transform urban mobility in various national and international contexts. A productive example of how the mobility humanities can engage in dialogue with actors involved in the transformation of urban mobilities!