Margaret Poulos: Biocultural Seascapes and Networks: International Convention and Exploratory Research in Sardinia, Italy

I attended the International Convention on Biocultural Networks and conducted exploratory field research in Sardegna, Italy. Through conversations with practitioners in the field and local stakeholders, I learned more about transforming sense of place along the northwest coast of Sardegna. In planning my future dissertation research, I am drawing on this experience while crafting my comparative research questions surrounding generational shifts in sense of places and their implications on marine resource management.

The Europe Center’s Graduate Student Grant (GSGC) supported my travel to Sardegna, Italy, in June 2024, to participate in a unique interdisciplinary convention and to scope potential research questions with local stakeholders. As a rising second-year PhD student in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER), I am interested in designing research that spans diverse fields and geographies. I intend to carry out comparative research in historic trends in marine resource use between the Mediterranean and West Indian Ocean, so the funding through GSGC was essential for me to travel to develop contacts and determine the feasibility of my research ideas.

My time in Sardegna began in Alghero, a city on the northwest coast. I was invited to present and attend the “Convention on Biocultural Networks: Green-Blue Infrastructures”, a transdisciplinary workshop coordinated by a professor at the University of Sassari, Dr. Gloria Pungetti. I was drawn to this convention because I am interested in the histories and transformations in natural-cultural environmental heritage. Taking place in Porto Conte Park, a terrestrial and marine protected area on the west coast, local stakeholders, academics, and government officials attended the convention. On the first day of the convention, attendees visited Punta Giglio and the Open Air Museum of Punta Giglio, to learn about the human history of the area and how it is intertwined with current efforts at protecting marine and coastal resources. Pictured below are some of the workshop attendees filling out “field trip cards” detailing our assessment of the cultural and natural elements of the area. In the following days of the workshop, we did this same activity at different points in Porto Conte Park.

Throughout the workshop, I thought deeply about how local perceptions of the coast and sea impacts modern engagement with it. Historically, the coasts of Sardegna were considered both unsafe and infertile, but today, rapid touristic development has changed how coastal resources are used. I also learned about the mixed opinions of how local stakeholders should engage within the protected area. Both during and after the workshop, I met with local stakeholders in Alghero, including business owners and members of the community, who had diverse opinions on how Punta Giglio should be protected. On one hand, small and medium enterprises within the park expressed their belief in balancing development and protection within the park, while other local community members strongly believed that the park should be fully protected from development. Learning more about the range of opinions on local natural resource use, I became interested in how policies and practices from mainland Italy compare and contrast to those desired by local Sardegnans, who also have a long history of autonomy from the mainland.

On another day of the workshop, we spent time learning from presentations about a range of related topics, including how to do community-led landscape planning, biocultural diversity in the Mediterranean, and I presented on the importance of transdisciplinary methods in biocultural research. Photographed below is the Porto Conte Park Director, Mariano Mariani, who discussed the current protected efforts and collaborations of the park.

Later on in the same day, we held participatory tables with local stakeholders to discuss their attachments to the marine park. With large maps of Porto Conte Park, we sat with locals to learn about the places within the park that they most strongly associate with and why. For example, at our table there were two men who grew up in the area and now have a vineyard within the park. When they were growing up, they would visit an area of the park that they thought was beautiful (and long before it was a protected area, too). Today, that is where their vineyard is. They are proud to have a small business within the park that connects to their life stories. We also heard from other local owners of small businesses within the park about their relationship to the coast, with many of them sharing stories about visiting quiet places within the park during their childhoods, how their parents earned livings along the coast, and how these spaces remain important to them.

In the days following the workshop, I had the opportunity to meet separately with local community members and learn more about their relationship to the park. For instance, I met with a local non-profit organization called Punta Giglio Libera, an environmental advocacy group that works to spread awareness of new projects taking place on Punta Giglio in Porto Conte Marine Park. We discussed how the cultural heritage and traditional knowledge of Punta Giglio that local communities hold must be protected by the park. There was also discussion about the concern that developing coastal places will have negative impacts on communities’ relationship with the coast. Throughout the workshop, I became quite interested in the relationship between small locally-owned businesses and the park, especially because many resided within the park's boundaries.

To learn more about this, I met with local vineyard owners to understand how the park supports their small business, as well as representatives from another small business on Punta Giglio. It was important to meet with these stakeholders to learn more about the diverse perspectives of Porto Conte Park and how it engages with the local community. From these conversations, I also learned about other issues that are important to Sardegnans, including the creation of a new protected area in the northwest, as well as their opinions on clean energy projects. In these discussions, new questions arose that I hope to explore further through my research, including: how does Sardegna’s history as a semi-autonomous island and with a strong sense of identity play a role in current island-mainland dynamics in environmental policy? How did Mussolini’s planned towns in Sardegna, especially in Alghero and Oristano, impact current human-environment relationships and environmental planning? As I continue to refine my research questions, I reflect on the conversations and experiences I had while in Sardegna.

The GSGC support was integral to my ability to connect with practitioners in the field of biocultural diversity and refine my future dissertation research questions. One of my goals while in Sardegna was to learn more about participatory methodologies by which community seascape values can be identified, and through this convention, I learned several. For instance, I learned about community mapping methods through which locals can identify places where there are intangible values, including recreation, aesthetic, and social values. I am also interested in diving into ecological oral history in my future research as a method for understanding sense of place. With the hope of planning continued research in Sardegna, I have been returning to my time spent there as I plan my fieldwork. Without the assistance of the GSGC, I would not have been able to further my work as a researcher and practitioner across cultural and natural heritage.