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The official languages of the Congress are Italian, English, Spanish and French.

1. Governing and Controlling the City
Powers, Institutions, Negotiations


Riccardo Ferrante (Università di Genova, DIGI), Stefano Gardini (Università di Genova, DAFIST), Andrea Longhi (Politecnico di Torino, DIST), Elena Manzo (Università degli Studi della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, DADI), Guido Zucconi (Università Iuav di Venezia).

This macro session explores the many ways in which cities have been—and continue to be—governed, managed, and controlled over time, with particular attention to the relationships between political power, institutions, and urban space. The wounds of the city may arise both from practices of violent imposition and from processes of discipline, reform, or reorganization: from the material construction of government buildings (palaces, fortifications, infrastructures) to the everyday management of urban life, from legal and fiscal mechanisms to symbolic strategies of political legitimation. Proposals are welcome that analyze how domination over the city has been expressed not only through coercion but also through the production of order, consensus, and representations, often resulting from negotiations and compromises among the various actors involved.

More specifically, the macro-session includes (but is not limited to) the following themes:

  • Architectures and spaces of power: public buildings, seats of government, administrative infrastructures, institutional geographies.
  • Governare la città: practices of governance, legal and fiscal frameworks, policies of public order and social control.
  • Reform and renewal initiatives: projects of transformation, disciplinary programs, modernization agendas.
  • Symbols and representations of power: civic rituals, iconographies, monuments; symbolic investments and strategies of representation.
  • Forms of opposition and resistance to power: protest movements, revolts, acts of dissent, alternative political cultures.

2. Attacking and Defending the City
Crises, Emergencies, Discontinuities


Cristina Cuneo (Politecnico di Torino, DIST), Ludovica Galeazzo (Università degli Studi di Padova, DBC), Massimiliano Savorra (Università di Pavia, DICAr), Stefano Zaggia (Università degli Studi di Padova, DICEA).

The city as a site of open wounds lies at the center of this macro session. Wars, sieges, revolutions, and uprisings—as well as natural disasters, economic crises, and public health emergencies—have profoundly shaped urban forms and social relations. Proposals are welcome that investigate how violence—physical, structural, or symbolic—becomes inscribed in urban spaces, redefining their boundaries, hierarchies, and functions, and how cities react, adapt, or are refounded in the aftermath of moments of rupture. Particular attention will be given to the connections between crisis and innovation, destruction and reconstruction, trauma and reparation.

More specifically, the macro-session includes (but is not limited to) the following themes:

  • War and urban violence: armed conflicts, sieges, revolutions, and uprisings; wartime destruction; militarization of urban space.
  • Difesa e sicurezza della città: fortificazioni, sistemi di prevenzione dai rischi e dalle precarietà, strategie emergenziali di salvaguardia delle popolazioni cittadine.
  • Moments of rupture and turning points: epidemics, famines, natural disasters; urban abandonment; economic crises, civil conflicts, social clashes.
  • Urban reconstruction and refoundation: postwar or post-disaster reconstruction; processes of reorganization after traumatic events; policies of reparation and compensation.
  • Internal fractures: civil conflicts; walls, barriers, and barricades; occupations, expulsions, and the demolition of buildings and neighborhoods as punishment or as collateral effects.

3. Living in and Inhabiting the City
Interests, Practices, Uses of Space


Denise Bezzina (Università di Genova, DAFIST), Paola Lanaro (Università Cà Foscari Venezia), Luca Mocarelli (Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca, Dipartimento DEMS).

This macro-session focuses on everyday practices and on the ways inhabitants appropriate, use, and contest urban space, understood as a field of tensions and deeply rooted inequalities, within which they are both exposed and vulnerable, yet also active in opening up and, at times, healing the city’s wounds. Markets, streets, neighborhoods, and informal or marginal spaces can serve as key sites for observing tensions related to work, mobility, housing, and inequalities of gender, class, and ethnicity. Proposals are welcome that examine the city as a lived space, shaped by conflicts of interest that may appear minor but are nonetheless decisive in shaping social relations and highly influential in broader processes of urban transformation.

More specifically, the macro-session includes (but is not limited to) the following themes:

  • Conflicts of everyday life: places of work and sociability as arenas of confrontation, negotiation, and cooperation, but also of competition and control.
  • Economic and social stratifications: differences in status, class, ethnicity, and religion; processes and strategies of producing, legitimizing, and challenging inequalities.
  • Gender-based discrimination: asymmetries in access to resources, services, and opportunities in urban life; forms of expression, resistance, and female agency.
  • Poverty, marginalization, vulnerability: processes of material and symbolic exclusion; policies and practices of assistance, control, stigmatization, and the criminalization of hardship.
  • Public/Private: expropriations, speculative practices, and privatization; regimes governing the appropriation and inappropriability of urban space; definitions, regulations, and boundaries within the city.

4. Narrating and Representing the City
Memories, Identities, Contested Heritage.

Emanuela Garofalo (Università degli Studi di Palermo, DARCH), Andrea Maglio (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Dicea), Laura Stagno (Università di Genova, DIRAAS), Duccio Tongiorgi (Università di Genova, DIRAAS).

The city is also a repository of memories—selective and conflicting—where the wounds of the past may be removed, displayed, reinterpreted, or instrumentalized. This macro session seeks to interrogate the processes through which the past is preserved, erased, or re-signified within urban space. Monuments, ruins, toponyms, heritage sites, and landscapes can be read as arenas of symbolic contention in which divergent and often incompatible narratives compete. Proposals are welcome that explore tensions and conflicts related to memory, processes of heritage-making and identity formation, as well as the role of the urban imagination in critically engaging with the wounds of the past.

More specifically, the macro-session includes (but is not limited to) the following themes:

  • Divided memories and contested heritage: competing narratives of the past; processes of patrimonialization and monumentalization; conflicts over the preservation of cultural heritage.
  • Traumas and removals: rewritings and resemanticizations of the past and its traces; practices of silencing or erasing memory.
  • Scrivere e descrivere la città: diari, cronache, guide, descrizioni del presente e del passato cittadino; la città come oggetto di studio.
  • Raffigurare la città: urban imagery, symbolic constructions, artistic, cartographic, literary, and media representations of urban space.

5. Imagining and Experimenting with the City
Programs, Challenges, Visions of the Future

Marco Doria (Università di Genova, DIEC), Giovanni Cristina (Università degli Studi Roma Tre, FilCoSpe), Elena Svalduz (Università degli Studi di Padova, DBC), Ines Tolic (Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, DAR).

This macro session looks at cities as laboratories for the incubation, development, and experimentation of forms of knowledge and programs oriented toward the future—a future often marked by the wounds of the present and the past. Utopias and dystopias, projects of political and technological renewal, artistic practices, and forms of urban activism draw upon expectations, forecasts, and fears that shape processes of urban transformation and involve civil society to varying degrees. Proposals are welcome that address these themes in their multiple dimensions, with particular attention—regarding the present—to the role of public history and public engagement practices in fostering a shared reflection on the social, environmental, and political challenges facing cities.

More specifically, the macro-session includes (but is not limited to) the following themes:

  • Utopias, dystopias, and urban imaginaries: mythic constructions, visions of the future, utopian projections.
  • Città laboratorio: political, economic, and social experimentation; urban spaces as testing grounds for new technological and infrastructural models.
  • Artistic and cultural practices: urban arts, creative cities, places of production, circulation, and consumption of culture.
  • Urban activism and civic participation: social movements, practices of active citizenship, grassroots initiatives, and forms of mobilization around the future of cities.
  • Toward a public urban history: participatory research, public uses of urban history, and co-production of knowledge about the city and its wounds.

6. Agora

Enrica Bistagnino (Università di Genova, DAD), Anna Boato (Università di Genova, DAD), Cristina Candito (Università di Genova, DAD), Marco Folin (Università di Genova, DAD), Andrea Giachetta (Università di Genova, DAD), Giampiero Lombardini (Università di Genova, DAD), Lucina Napoleone (Università di Genova, DAD), Federica Pompejano (Università di Genova, DAD), Valter Scelsi (Università di Genova, DAD).

For the first time, and on an experimental basis, the AISU conference opens to proposals for events and activities of a non-academic nature, engaging with public history. Proposals may take a wide range of formats —debates, talks, screenings, performances, exhibition displays, and multimedia installations—provided they are methodologically grounded and critically informed. Proposals at an early stage are welcome and may be further developed in dialogue with the organizers.
During the conference, a dedicated time slot (approximately 6.00–7.30 pm) will be reserved for selected proposals, to be presented in public venues and open to a broader audience. In light of the experimental nature of this initiative, the organizers reserve the right to discuss and adjust proposals with applicants in accordance with spatial and logistical constraints.

Possible formats include:

  • Talks, debates and roundtables.
  • Exhibition displays.
  • Video screenings and multimedia installations.
  • Performances and shows.

The 13th AISU Congress (Genoa, 7-10 September 2027) is organized by: