A new journey begins

Today, April 1st, I begin my journey as an independent visiting scholar at The American University of Rome, with a project titled “The silent struggle and the institutional silence. Women and the experience of food poverty in Italy”. It is a project that builds on the work and reflections of recent years, and which I expect will be both intense and challenging, as well as deeply stimulating. It aims at deepening the understanding of food poverty as experienced by women in Italy, placing at its core their life stories.

Using an ethnographic approach, it prioritizes listening to women who struggle to make ends meet. By capturing womens’ lived experiences through interviews and participant observation and integrating these with insights from institutional actors (such as volunteers, managers, and activists), the study aims to develop a nuanced understanding of the issue.

Food poverty is understood and tackled in different ways in different contexts: in the context of high-income countries, it must be recognized as a condition that goes beyond limited access to food, involving dimensions that profoundly impact individuals’ dignity, social relationships and psychological well-being.