Pa.S.T.I.S. considers innovation processes in the quest for the environmental sustainability of human activities. An increasingly large proportion of basic and applied research is devoted to issues of environmental protection; Pa.S.T.I.S. researchers therefore pay particular attention to these issues. Debate about sustainability inevitably involves concern for territorial development paths and the repercussions of specific infrastructural choices at the local level in the energy and mobility fields. Environmental and sociotechnical solutions aimed at sustainability often reverberate through the media, making it possible to examine the relevant discourses and relationships between actors. This requires a multidisciplinary approach that combines economic, sociological, and territorial perspectives. Consistently, with the environment, sustainability, and territory as its main research interests, Pa.S.T.I.S. focuses mainly on:

• the study of sustainable practices in relation to consumption and focusing on space mobility, economic activities in certain areas, and the food–water–energy triad

• the media coverage of environmental issues, with a specific emphasis on environmental policy issues, considering the heterogeneous actors that populate the public scene and the relationships between them

• innovation processes for the protection of the environment, with the analytical gaze focused on the design and introduction of technologies that aim to reduce the environmental impact of production and consumption activities

• citizens’ participation and mobilisation, investigating what initiatives individual citizens, groups, and movements pursue in order to protect the environment, from training to protest, and from the collection of environmental data to the creation of green enterprises.

Projects:

• Rivers and City: an ambivalent relationship
• Volunteering and rivers: a sociological space