Salvatore Paolo De Rosa

• Presentation
• CV
• Research outputs
• Keywords

I am a researcher in political ecology, with a background in anthropology and human geography, working at the intersection of social sciences and environmental humanities. My research focuses on processes of social mobilization, grassroots organizing and collective action in relation to socio-environmental transformations and conflicts. I am also a writer and a scholar committed to climate, environmental and social justice. I collaborate with activist groups, civil society organizations and independent media outlets.

Current research

In my research project within Climate Justice Temporalities in Denmark (JusTiDe), I will address the nexus between escalation of tactics by climate movements VS increasing activists’ repression by governments, looking at Denmark and the European context.

The study has two aims. The first is to explore the relationship between climate justice claims and escalation of tactics by movements on the ground, focusing on the temporal imaginaries of climate justice that legitimize disruptive actions. The second, is to explain how state repression of climate activism operates through framing, policing, and legal means, emphasizing the effects of repression on individual activists and civil society at large, as well as the effects of trials on movements' goals and organizational forms.

Integral to the research effort is the creation of Climate Justice Laboratories (CJ Labs) to deliver applicable outputs. By convening the CJ Labs as spaces of discussion, self-formation and deliberation between activists, journalists, researchers and public officials, the plan is to contribute to shared understandings of the logics and outcomes of repression and to collectively elaborate strategic indications. Potential outputs include the development of an Observatory on the Repression of Climate Activism; the co-authoring of a practical manual to counteract repression (with legal, social and political tools) and of guidelines for climate justice transformations from the ground-up.

Fields of interest

A consistent theme running through my research is an interrogation of the politics and cultures of grassroots environmental organizing in the context of multiple ecological and social crises, aimed at supporting the self-determination and self-organization of marginalized and impacted communities in the quest for social, environmental and climate justice.

My approach to research promotes ethical committment, trasformative knowledge and mutual learning. I contribute to networks of scientists, journalists and activists and organize workshops, collaborations and dissemination of results within and beyond academia. Intrinsic to my intellectual work is also my longstanding participation in the scholar-activist collective and political ecology platform Undisciplined Environments and in the independent media Monitor.

Selected publications

1. Published

   Disobey, block, organize: The politics and strategies of grassroots climate activism in Malmö and Sweden

   De Rosa, Salvatore Paolo, 2024, Urban Movements and Climate Change: Loss, Damage and Radical Adaptation. Amsterdam University Press

   Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research › peer-review

2. Published

   An emerging governmentality of climate change loss and damage

   Jackson, G., N'guetta, A., De Rosa, Salvatore Paolo, Scown, M., Dorkenoo, K., Chaffin, B. C. & Boyd, E., 11 Jan 2023, In: Progress in Environmental Geography.

   Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review

3. Breaking Consensus, Transforming Metabolisms: Notes on direct-action against fossil fuels through Urban Political Ecology

   De Rosa, Salvatore Paolo, 2022, In: Social Text. 40, 150, p. 135–155

   Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review

4. Vulnerability and activism in urban climate politics: An actor-centered approach to transformational adaptation in Malmö (Sweden)

   De Rosa, Salvatore Paolo, de Moor, J. & Dabaieh, M., 2022, In: Cities. 130, 103848.

   Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review