• — Italia Dialogue with local communities, trust-based relationships, meaningful collaborations
  • Open lecture Urbanismo affettivo [“Affective Urbanism”] and exhibition of the project Italia di mezzo [“Middle Italy”], CRAFT Space, Politecnico di Milano.
    Rectorate, Politecnico di Milano.

    National context and higher education system With a population of around 59 million, Italy is among the major European countries in terms of demographic and economic size and presents generally advanced social and economic conditions. 
  • The higher education system, rooted in a long historical tradition, includes both public and private universities distributed across the national territory and plays a central role in higher education and knowledge production. However, this role is shaped by a structural limitation: Italy invests relatively little in research and development compared to other comparable European countries, with total expenditure around 1.5% of GDP.  Within this context of limited resources, universities operate under highly differentiated conditions, resulting in a heterogeneous system where large institutions in major urban centres coexist with universities located in areas characterized by greater socio-economic fragility.
     Community engagement in Italy In Italy, community engagement is carried out through activities aimed at bringing research outside traditional academic contexts, including public events, science communication initiatives, projects involving citizens, activities with schools, and collaborations with local authorities and third-sector organizations. The goal is to make science more accessible and to foster dialogue between those who produce knowledge and those who live within local communities.  Compared with other European countries, such as the United Kingdom, this approach to university–society relations developed somewhat later. For a long time, community engagement has been considered secondary to universities’ traditional missions of teaching and research. In recent years, however, community engagement has gained clearer recognition and has progressively been incorporated into the evaluation systems of universities’ third mission.   A key step was the inclusion of these activities in the Valutazione della Qualità della Ricerca (VQR) starting from the 2011–2014 cycle, the main national exercise assessing university research performance. Since 2018, under the guidance of the Agenzia Nazionale di Valutazione del Sistema Universitario e della Ricerca (ANVUR), universities have begun to document their engagement activities more systematically.  These activities now influence, although to a limited extent, the allocation of a portion of public funding. Despite these developments, many initiatives still rely on the direct commitment of individual researchers or departments, also due to the lack of dedicated resources.
     Universities involved in the PLACES project* In the Italian context, the community engagement practices observed in the two universities involved in the PLACES project are primarily based on the continuity of personal relationships between academics and civil society actors, and on the gradual construction of dialogue with local communities.  Field interviews highlighted the importance of building sustained relationships over time and sharing common goals to initiate meaningful collaborations, especially in the early stages.  In both case studies, engagement takes shape through a combination of informal channels and more structured spaces: direct contacts and personal networks are complemented by forums, public events, and institutional initiatives promoted by universities. Festivals, spaces made available by universities and local administrations, as well as collaborations with associations, schools, and third-sector organizations, represent key settings where interaction between universities and communities becomes concrete and visible.  Overall, community engagement in Italian universities appears as an evolving process, strongly shaped by local specificities.

    * To protect the privacy of the individuals and institutions involved, the names of the universities have been anonymised.