Raffaele Ippolito

Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in Geography and the Environment - Degree completed in 2024

Supervisors: Professor Anna Lora-Wainwright and Professor Beth Greenhough

Global Environmental (in)Activism: An Ethnography of Pollution, Illness and Community Resistance in Italy and Taiwan

Academic Profile

Raffaele is a doctoral researcher studying the everyday experiences of industrial pollution and illness in fence-line communities. Funded by a Wellcome Trust Doctoral Studentship, his research is situated at the intersection of citizen science, political ecology and environmental justice. Raffaele holds a BA in Social Anthropology and Development Studies from SOAS, University of London and an MSc in Global Health from Taipei Medical University. Prior to joining Oxford, he carried out research on gender equality in health at the United Nations University - International Institute for Global Health and on Chinese migrants in the UK at Regent's University London.

Current Research

Raffaele's research is an ethnographic investigation into the lived experience of illness and activism across two marginalised communities severely affected by industrial pollution in Italy and Taiwan. His project questions how notions of 'environment' and 'justice' are co-produced as complex symbolic configurations assembled at the crossroads of historical, scientific, institutional, and interpersonal trajectories. Understanding how these communities make sense of their polluted worlds is fundamental in order to grasp their political aspirations and self-collocation within local and global narratives of environmental justice. Raffaele's research responds to this call by generating new theoretical and methodological tools that can enable these communities to connect and participate in environmental justice debates at the global level.

Selected Publications

Journal Articles

Book Chapters

  • Ippolito, A.R. (forthcoming) Beyond Protest - The Moral Struggle of Industrial Pollution in Taranto, Italy. In, Bonneuil, C. (ed.) In the Shadow of the Petrochemical Smokestack - Chemical Corridors and Environmental Health. Le Seuil, Paris.