The Lab
CURA Lab is an interdisciplinary territorial research laboratory that investigates inequality and contemporary processes of marginalisation. The Lab stems from the need to develop a critical perspective capable of examining the complexity of the territory, understood as the outcome of the interaction between macro-social dynamics, policies, everyday practices and the form they take in space.
Research lines
A multidisciplinary, critical and multifocal analysis of the transformative forces affecting local territories, and of the conflicting interests and imaginaries associated with them.
A reflection aimed at improving living conditions in marginal and marginalised spaces, through experimental actions and by defining directions for intervention that can inform public policy.
Younger generations and learning contexts
A line of research developed both inside and outside educational institutions and in contact with local actors, aimed at fostering processes of inclusion and of social and spatial change.
Co-production of knowledge and the role of the university
A reflection that seeks to reposition academic knowledge, recognising that local expertise is indispensable for analysing territories and for promoting truly effective transformations.
Our approach
The Lab’s members bring disciplinary expertise in urban planning and anthropology, together with cross-cutting skills applied to work in local contexts. The Lab’s investigative approach is based on “being there”, on listening, on building meaningful relationships in the contexts where it operates, and on the “co-creation” of research. The territory is not merely a field in which to experiment with knowledge production, but above all an environment in which to share interpretations, visions and projects. With this approach, we work innovatively across five areas:
Renewing the methods of academic and scientific knowledge production
Producing shared and usable knowledge through interactive processes and the use of hybrid languages
Working on the skills of networks and territories, with a focus on public institutions and third-sector organisations
Practising policy design as a multi-actor and enabling process
Delivering teaching and training activities attentive to the circular relationship between experience and learning
Renewing the methods of academic and scientific knowledge production
Producing shared and usable knowledge through interactive processes and the use of hybrid languages
Working on the skills of networks and territories, with a focus on public institutions and third-sector organisations
Practising policy design as a multi-actor and enabling process
Delivering teaching and training activities attentive to the circular relationship between experience and learning
Our history and Off Campus
The Lab inherits the ten-year research path developed by the action-research group Mapping San Siro (DAStU, Politecnico di Milano) and deepens its methodology, broadening its thematic and spatial scope to contexts undergoing processes of marginalisation and peripheralisation at local, national and global scales. The San Siro neighbourhood, the shared foundation of the experience of the Lab’s founding members, thus becomes a privileged context for testing some of its projects.
Building on this experience, CURA Lab promotes the idea of a university open to its territory, one that welcomes and supports the demands for change emerging from local communities and networks, and that takes part in processes of social innovation by sharing its resources and expertise. For this reason, CURA Lab is based within Off Campus – Il Cantiere per le Periferie, the Politecnico di Milano’s social engagement and responsibility programme, which comprises four threshold spaces located in marginalised contexts, where the university experiments with innovative teaching, responsible research, co-design and neighbourhood services. We are currently based at Off Campus San Siro, in Via Gigante, opposite no. 5, Milan.
To find out more, visit: www.mappingsansiro.polimi.it
Publications in English
#Urban transformations and inequalities #Housing, peripheries and margins #Younger generations and learning contexts #Co-production of knowledge and the role of the university
To know more about San Siro
Grassi, P. (2025), “Fluctuating futures: coming of age in the biggest social housing neighbourhood in Milan”, in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, early view. Link to publication
Cognetti, F., Grassi, P. (2024), “Role and Meaning of Public Space: Findings from the Margins of Milan”, in Space and Culture, 27(4), pp. 580-594. Link to publication
Grassi, P. (2024), Barrio San Siro. Structural Violence in the Peripheries of Milan (foreword by Dennis Rodgers), Lexington Books, Lanham, Maryland. Link to publication
Grassi, P. (2024), “Star rovers: Rap escapes and nostalgic narrations in a Milanese social housing neighbourhood”, in Stuit, H., Turner, J., Weegels, J. (eds.), Carceral Worlds. Legacies, Textures and Futures, Bloomsbury, pp. 109-126. Link to publication
Ranzini, A. (2024), “Erased Narratives of Care: Migrant Women’s Urban Experiences Beyond Stigmatisation”, in A Transdisciplinary Study of Global Mobilities. Identities on the Move, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 71-98. Link to publication
Alwall, J., Cognetti, F., Ranzini, A. (eds.) (2023), Women4Integration. A journey into migrant women’s inclusion in Europe. Recommendations and inspirations for practice, Malmö University, Malmö. Link to publication
Mansilla, J. C., Grassi, P., Queirolo Palmas, L. (2022), “Contemporary Youth Culture at the Margins of Marseille and Milan: Gangs, Music, and Global Imaginaries”, in Youth and Globalization, 3(2), pp. 359-385. Link to publication
Grassi, P., Fava, F. (2020), “Violence and space. A comparative ethnography of two Italian ‘badlands'”, in ANUAC, 9(1), pp. 183-210. Link to publication
To know more about our research method
Caistor-Arendar, L., Cognetti, F., d’Auria, V., De Carli, B., Pontiggia, S., Rohde, K. (eds.) (2025), Practices of Urban Inclusion: Exploring Space and Migration in Four European Cities, dpr-barcelona, Barcelona. Link to publication
Cognetti, F., De Carli, B. (2024), “Finding common ground on the threshold: An experiment in critical urban learning”, in Planning Theory, 23(4), pp. 400-422. Link to publication
Aernouts, N., Cognetti, F., Maranghi, E. (eds.) (2023), Urban Living Labs for Local Regeneration. Beyond Participation in Large-scale Social Housing Estates, Springer. Link to publication
Cognetti, F., Pontiggia, S. (2022), Practices of urban inclusion. From Design to Implementation, London Metropolitan University, London. Link to publication
Cognetti, F. (2021), “Responsible research and responsible education: society-oriented components of the Third Mission”, in Orsini, F., Pogliani, L. (eds.), Milano. The future of peripheries re-shaping the metropolitan city, Pearson, Milan-Turin, pp. 52-57. Link to publication