michele lancione's blog
Tomorrow I’ll be opening up an event on housing justice at the Sapienza University of Rome. I look forward to this day of exchange, which will include scholars and organisers whom I admire for their work.
With deep thanks to my comrade Osvaldo Costantini, who generously spent time and energy to bring all of us together!
The event is free and open to all. Info: https://contropiano.org/interventi/2026/06/08/l11-giugno-un-convegno-sul-diritto-allabitare-alla-sapienza-0195807
In this podcast episode, Eva Korte (PhD candidate, TU Berlin), Judith Keller (postdoctoral researcher, HU Berlin), and Khushboo Jain (PhD candidate, FAU Nürnberg-Erlangen) are in conversation with me, exploring my idea of a “liberatory politics of home,” which I outlined in my latest book.
The episode was recorded as part of a workshop on different ideas and ideal of home, which explored the spatial politics and practices surrounding home research. Reflecting on the intricacies and the emotional labor involved in doing home research, the conversation helps to work through and reflect on issues such as research practice, fieldwork, positionality, and the political implications of our work.
You can find the podcast here: https://sfb1265.de/einblicke/space-oddity/#space-oddity-28-ideals-of-home-disentangled
Last week I spent some time at the University of Calabria, near Cosenza. I had a wonderful experience thanks to my real generous host, Carmelo Buscema. The level of debate was quite amazing, and the level of critical inquiry was also deep, honest and generous.
I also had the privilege of spending some time with my friend Antonio Mazzeo – one of the few in Italy who has spent real energy and time in investigating the relationships between the military and our Schools and Universities.
Below, some random pictures from the sea at Paola, near Cosenza.
I am glad to be part of the open-access volume “Insurgent ground: land, housing, property” curated by the wonderful Ananya Roy, Terra Graziani & Annie Powers.
The book emerges from a Freedom School held at the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy in Summer 2024. From the Institute’s website:
Organized as part of the project, Housing the Third Reconstruction, the convening brought together movement and university-based scholars actively engaged in insurgent research and critical theorization as a part of, or as accompaniment to, freedom movements. Intended as inquiry into the conditions and possibilities of emancipatory land and housing, Freedom School 2024 took up the following issues and questions: 1) What is the present historical conjuncture of global racial capitalism and the attendant political economy and ideology of land and real-estate?; 2) How are movements undertaking land struggle, dismantling police-property relations, and enacting housing and spatial justice?; 3) How do we learn from “beautiful experiments” (Hartman 2019) of reconstruction, rematriation, reparation, and decolonization that are or have been underway? In the wake of mass protest movements that reveal possible futures while failing to materialize their aspirations, how can collective liberatory work learn from its recent and distant pasts in order to realize the world we imagine?; and 4) What are the ontologies of radical relationality, including kinship, presence, solidarity, and community, that are being created to counter social death and state-organized abandonment?
Download: https://challengeinequality.luskin.ucla.edu/2025/05/05/insurgentground/
With my brother AbdouMaliq we recently published a paper in EPD: Society & Space, titled: “Dispossessed exposures. Housing and regimes of the visible“
You can download it here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02637758241274636
Literatures and organising show us how, in contemporary racial financial capitalism, housing is formed through dispossessive histories and geographies. Here, we query how these enter into play in the visual regimes through which housing is seen and experienced. For if the visual realm is as much a construct as any other housing matter, finding a grammar to tap into its workings might become handy when its violent outcomes come to the fore. What is reproduced in the visual regimes of housing? What is offered and taken anyway? What might never be seen, and by whom? The article offers a tentative analytical approach to questioning what we call dispossessed exposures: the (en)visioning of homely futures that are deprived, already in the social construct of seeing with the house, the possibility of radical care for and of habitation. These ideas are unpacked through reflection on two films: Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables and Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouihl’s Gagarine. We offer these reasonings as a contribution to ongoing conversations in the renewed field of housing justice scholarship.
I arrived yesterday in Shanghai and I look forward to being based here and in Suzhou for the next five weeks, as part of my visiting time at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU).
I will spend time with colleagues at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Urban & Culture research group, to discuss our shared interests in homing, housing and urbanity. I am thankful to Liu Cao for the invitation and to Lei Yuan for the help in putting this visiting together.
For now, just a view from the balcony in Putuo.
Today in Bologna, two moments for collective discussion on #housing, #domicile, #housingjustice & #war, #militarisation, #university.
– 2:30 pm, “Housing: a crossroads of struggles” an event co-organized by PLAT – Platform for Social Intervention and Beyond Inhabitation Lab (www.beyondinhabitation.org): https://www.facebook.com/events/1376025483313577/
– 7:00 pm, discussion based on my text #University and #Militarisation published by Eris Edizioni, at Libreria modo infoshop: https://www.facebook.com/events/2655636501260834
All welcome!
I’m happy to take part to two important events taking place under the auspice of the City of Naples this week.
Tomorrow, Wednesday 7 June we are going to have a discussion with the talented Sarah Gainsforth on #housing, #housing and housing struggles.
Events will continue on Thursday 8 with a second meeting I will also be part of, organised by the City of Naples on ‘Housing Precarity and Access to Housing’.
I would also like to mention the public demonstration tomorrow afternoon against the touristification of the city:
https://facebook.com/events/s/piu-diritto-allabitare-meno-af/240836328568899/
More info on https://www.comune.napoli.it/dialoghisullabitare
🏠𝗗𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗵𝗶 𝘀𝘂𝗹𝗹’𝗔𝗯𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗲
📅𝟳, 𝟴, 𝟭𝟯 𝗴𝗶𝘂𝗴𝗻𝗼 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯, 𝗡𝗮𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶
The housing emergency is an issue that has returned, after years, to national prominence. The Municipality of Naples has joined a network of local administrations that in recent weeks have put forward a proposal to the national government for 𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗴𝗲 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗱𝗿𝗼 𝗽𝗲𝗿 𝗹’𝗘𝗱𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘇𝗶𝗮 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘇𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗲 𝗣𝘂𝗯𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮, a policy of free assignment of unused state or parastatal properties to municipalities, the refinancing of the National Rental Fund and the National Fund for the Blighted, a national law to regulate tourist platforms, and a national measure that structurally recognises emergency housing and homelessness.
On these topics, the Municipality of Naples is organising a series of meetings with the theme of housing, through round tables, conferences and thematic discussions.
✅𝗔𝗯𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗮. 𝗟𝗮 𝗰𝗮𝘀𝗮: 𝘂𝗻 𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗼
Conversation with Sarah Gainsforth
📌7 June 2023 15.00 Department of Architecture, Aula Andriello
✅𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘁𝗮̀ 𝗮𝗯𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮 𝗲 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼 𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗮 𝗰𝗮𝘀𝗮
Public meeting on extreme forms of precarisation
📌8 June 2023 at 10.00 a.m., Real Albergo dei Poveri, Naples
✅𝗣𝗲𝗿 𝘂𝗻𝗮 𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮 𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗹’𝗮𝗯𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗲: 𝗱𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗵𝗶 𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘇𝗮 𝗰𝗮𝘀𝗮 𝗶𝗻 𝗜𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗮
📌13 June 2023 at 10.00 Real Albergo dei Poveri, Naples
💻More information on the institutional site:👇
www.comune.napoli.it/dialoghisullabitare
