TransAlps - Sustainable transition and applied research in alpine territories

The TransAlps project is the 2021 laureate of the "Ecological transition and social justice" theme.

The use of ethnographic and comparative methods of anthropology to the variety of forms of territorial governance has been little explored by social research. However, the analysis of relations underway between States and their “marginal” areas, and in particular the intersections between the various scales of democratic participation, at a time of profound political, economic, and ecological mutations following the Covid-19 health crisis, is extremely important. However, methods and epistemological and deontological features of a socio-anthropology involved in the elaboration of collective and inclusive projects towards transition still need to be defined. By comparing the ways of articulating the scales of public action in three Alpine contexts, in France, Switzerland and Italy respectively, The TRANSAlp project aims - on the one hand - to empirically explore the conditions of a transition to sustainability and social justice in singular socio-spatial configurations and - on the other hand - to inquire on the role that social sciences, and in particular an applied and implicated socio-anthropology, can play in the setting up of new governance models.

Porteur du projet

Gabriele Orlandi

• Institution: Aix-Marseille University
• Scientific field: alpine anthropology, economic anthropology, development anthropology, historical anthropology,

Scientific output

Orlandi Gabriele, 2021, Mangiare la montagna, arginare lo spopolamento : processi di tipicizzazione e prospettive di sviluppo territoriale nel caso di un formaggio DOC cuneese (1890-1985), Il Presente e la Storia, set 2021, no 99 (to be published)

Orlandi Gabriele et Noûs Camille, 2021, « La renaissance des campagnes : Enquête dans une France qui se réinvente, de Vincent Grimault, aux Éditions du Seuil », Les cahiers de la LCD, 2021, N° 14. (to be published)

Scientific activities

Member of the "Societies in Mutation in the Mediterranean" (SoMuM) institute , doctoral program "Mediterranean Studies"

Winner of the WWNA APPLY AWARD 2021, category "social movements" as a collaborator of the research project "Montagne In Movimento" - EASA Applied Anthropology Network

Team members

Valentina Porcellana

Permanent researcher in anthropology with qualification of second rank professor. First (2008) affiliated to the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences of the University of Turin and - since 2020 - lecturer in Alpine Anthropology and Anthropology of Tourism at the Department of Human and Social Sciences of the University of Aosta Valley / Università della Valle d'Aosta (Italy).

Viviana L. Toro Matuk

• Doctorate in Anthropology - Milano Bicocca University-Italy

Lecturer in applied ethics, philosophy and sociology of health, prevention and health education, with a particular interest in contemporary bioethical debate.