the Research


The Migrations | Mediations project tackles the different uses of media, theatre and performance, art and culture in the management of migratory phenomena and the promotion of intercultural dialogue. Specific attention is given to the practices implemented in Milan and Lombardy.

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore funds the project as a “University Interest Project” for the years 2016-2019. It mainly involves scholars and researchers from the Department of Communication and Performing Arts but also collects the contributions of scholars from other departments.

The project has a twofold nature. On the one hand it is a research project, and therefore intends to map forms of representation produced by old and new media; policies expressed and enacted by institutions; concrete initiatives and practices coming from associations, cooperatives, cultural groups, etc., in relation to the use of media, theatre and art in intercultural dialogue. As a research project, Mediations | Migrations organises workshops and conferences collecting scholars from various disciplinary fields; constructs and implements research tools such as archives and databases; produces some volumes, special issues of journals, individual contributions by researchers.

On the other hand, Mediations | Migrations is a project of intervention, aimed to promote cross-collaboration between institutions, producers and artists; to disseminate good practices and to encourage their replicability; to support and implement a professional awareness of the operators in the field. As such, Migrations | Mediations promotes meetings between producers, operators and policymakers; makes its databases available to them; it is linked to similar initiatives at national and European level; produces a “White Paper of the operators of intercultural dialogue”.

The project is divided into four modules:

1. Media, theatre & performance, arts & culture in the management of migratory phenomena and intercultural dialogue: the bibliographic and research panorama. This module produced a bibliographic database and an archive of European research, that can be consulted on the project website.

2. Representations of migrations in old and new media: the political discourse. This module produced the volume Migrazioni e comunicazione politica Le elezioni regionali 2018 tra vecchi e nuovi media [Migrations and political communication The regional elections 2018 between old and new media] (Edited by Marina Villa, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2019)

3. Culture, arts, migration and intercultural dialogue: European and National policies. The module produced a database of documents and a series of 6 video interviews available on the website.

4. Experiences and operators of intercultural dialogue in Lombardy. This module produced a database of operators and one of the experiences, available on the website. These two archives are completed by 40 video clips dedicated to the deepening of many projects. The archives are completed by a reasoned database of the ethnic restaurants in Milan analysed as subjects of intercultural dialogue; this latter database has been created in collaboration with the Master in Communication of the Creative Industries of Università Cattolica, academic year 2017/18, and includes 15 video clips dedicated to the deepening of as many restaurants.