The main activities performed in these first 24 months of the Project were:
- The recruitment and selection of the most suitable candidates to work in the Project team;
- The formation of the team through the construction of a common scientific language and bibliography; team building through weekly meetings and common discussions on the main scholarship;
- The creation of the project’s communication and public platforms (website, internal tools, newsletter);
- The identification of the case studies for each team member and definition of each research project;
- Exploratory trips to each fieldwork context to identify specificities and define objectives, as well as address logistical issues preparatory to the fieldwork;
- The organisation of the project kickoff conference;
- Training on feminist ethnography methodology;
- Work on the ethical aspects of the research fieldworks;
- In-depth study of the case studies and related literature, preparatory to departure for the ethnographic fieldworks.
- Departure for individual fieldwork, currently in progress.
In terms of content, one of the most debated issues concerned the use of the concept and term fascism in the description and analysis of the phenomena under examination. The extensive debate in the literature does not exhaust the many complexities that emerge in everyday life, where the f-word appears constantly and widely in the press, political statements, graffiti, etc. Far from being a category anchored in its history, fascism seems to be a term capable of deeply mobilising people in the present, both those involved in political and public debate and young people and/or adults without public political positions in their daily lives. It is therefore a subject of study whose social life deserves to be investigated, as it is capable of revealing, on the one hand, the mobilising power that historical narrative assumes in our present, and on the other, the central role that the f-word is playing in structuring regimes of meaning for people and thus determining forms of political positioning, regardless of its real meaning in history.
