Dr. Katherine Lambert-Pennington, director of the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy and associate professor in the Department of Anthropology has received a 2021-22 Fulbright U.S. Scholar award to Italy. Lambert-Pennington will be hosted by the University of Catania Department of Political and Social Sciences and conduct participatory-ethnographic research in the Simeto River Valley. The project, “Developing Alternatives: Transforming the Politics of Development in Sicily,” investigates the potential for shared governance and citizens’ collective actions to cultivate new political spaces, collective identities of place and alternative approaches to development. From February-June 2022, she will follow the activities of a network of organizations, municipalities and activists that are part of the Simeto River Agreement.
As a Fulbright Scholar, Lambert-Pennington will share knowledge and foster meaningful connections across communities in the United States and Italy. Her project will contribute to critical studies of development and the study of environmental governance, and democracy in an understudied region of Sicily. Upon returning, she will apply the lessons learned from the Simeto case to questions of sustainable development, ecological care and environmental justice in Memphis.
For more information on this research, contact Lambert-Pennington at K.Lambert-Pennington@memphis.edu. For more information about the Fulbright Program, visit http://eca.state.gov/fulbright.