The research project is called “BRIDGES – Building Reflexivity and response-ability Involving Different narratives of knowledGE and Science” and is coordinated by the Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment (Irea) of the CNR in Milan under the scientific responsibility of Dr. Alba L’Astorina. The project is funded by Fondazione Cariplo with funds allocated to Social Research on Science, Technology and Society.

The project employs transdisciplinary and participatory research methods to understand and strengthen the relationship between science, society and ecological systems in the Italian context. To do so, it uses soil fertility as a case study, a topic of local and global interest, declared by the United Nations General Assembly as one of the three planetary emergencies, along with climate change and biodiversity loss. Soil fertility is also a complex and controversial topic, because its management and protection involve a series of new relationships and visions among science, society, ecosystems and human and non-human actors.

The project, which begins on April 15, 2021 and lasts two years, includes a social investigation component in the Italian context that will involve thousands of young CNR researchers and researchers from other scientific networks, focusing on dominant narratives about the science-society relationship around controversial topics. Starting from some emerging discourses, a series of meetings and seminars will be organized in urban and rural settings, along with some Citizen Science activities, in which some of the researchers involved will experiment, together with networks of citizens, with a participatory and hybrid type of research to discuss and produce collectively constructed soil fertility indicators. They will be supported in this process by educators, artists, soil microbiology specialists, and farmers.

The objectives that BRIDGES sets out to achieve relate to:

• investigating, mapping and enriching the narratives that define and frame Italian disciplinary scientific research;
• experimenting with a pilot process of co-production of transdisciplinary research practices on soil fertility, through a series of meetings and seminars in urban and rural settings, and some citizen science activities;
• developing a reflexive attitude and a sense of responsibility in citizens and researchers, making them aware that they are a fertile resource for Italy.

The project consists of 6 work packages. IRPPS participates in WP1 for the implementation of a survey among young Italian researchers.