Firepol ERC

FIREPOL is an ERC funded research team based at the Università di Torino investigating the nexus between politics and wildfires across the Global South

17/09/2026

Through Legislative Theatre, community members came together to share experiences, act out challenges, and collectively explore possible solutions for fire management and governance. This video captures part of that process, showing how theatre can create a space for people to exchange knowledge, question existing practices, and imagine ways of living with fire together.

Conduction of performance and theatre stage direction: Alessandra Vannucci

16/09/2026

Il team di FIREPOL parteciperà agli eventi organizzati per la Notte delle Ricercatrici e dei Ricercatori.
Presenterà due brevi documentari girati in Brasile e Angola per osservare come le comunità affrontano gli incendi. Tra ecofemminismo e teatro partecipativo, scoprirete pratiche che intrecciano ambiente, diritti e conoscenze locali. Al termine, una discussione aperta per ripensare insieme le politiche del fuoco.

--> Data: sabato 26 settembre
--> Orario: 12.00-13.00
--> Luogo: Area Talk T1: Parco del Valentino Viale Mattioli, 39 – Torino (TO)
--> Link: https://unightproject.eu/it/eventi/la-notte-europea-delle-ricercatrici-e-dei-ricercatori-2026?day=1790380800&location=233&ecat=54&query=fuoco&sort=default

UNIGHT

08/09/2026

We are pleased to share FIREPOL’s new publication:

Performing Fire Governance: Co-Creating an Integrated Fire Management Plan Through Legislative Theatre in Eastern Angola

The article documents the application of Legislative Theatre as a participatory approach to co-develop an Integrated Fire Management plan in eastern Angola. Through 37 stories based on lived experiences and collective, performance-based exercises exploring fire-related problems across seven villages, communities articulated diverse fire uses, values, and shared norms for improving local fire governance.

Theatre-based methods enabled the expression of embodied, emotional, and experiential knowledge often overlooked by conventional engagement approaches, while supporting knowledge co-production and participant agency. Legislative Theatre and storytelling provide practical tools for strengthening the socio-cultural dimensions of Integrated Fire Management.

➡️You can read it here: https://doi.org/10.3390/fire9090366
➡️Citation: Escobar-Alvarado, Luisa F., Lorenza B. Fontana, Telmo Ernesto Meneses António, and Alessandra Vannucci. 2026. "Performing Fire Governance: Co-Creating an Integrated Fire Management Plan Through Legislative Theatre in Eastern Angola" Fire 9, no. 9: 366.

31/08/2026

Last year, as part of the FIREPOL project, we facilitated a Legislative Theatre workshop in Tempué, eastern Angola, in collaboration with Fundação Lisima, the Okavango Wilderness Project and People Powered. This effort brought together community members and traditional authorities to explore challenges around fire use and management. Through storytelling and participatory theatre, communities developed eight community fire management rules aimed at promoting safer fire practices, strengthening coordination, and supporting collective responsibility for fire management.

This year, this work has taken an important next step.

In June 2026, our partner institution Fundação Lisima led a validation process of these eight rules across six villages in the Lisima landscape, involving 133 community members. The communities reviewed the proposed rules, discussed how they could work in practice, and identified responsibilities, monitoring mechanisms, implementation procedures, and ways of addressing non-compliance.

Importantly, the process showed that many of the proposed measures build on existing local knowledge and customary practices related to fire use and management. Communities also selected representatives for local fire management committees and community firefighter groups, laying the foundations for putting the rules into practice.

For FIREPOL, seeing the work initiated through last year's workshop taken up and further developed by communities is particularly meaningful. It shows the value of creating participatory spaces where local knowledge and experiences can contribute to concrete fire governance processes and where research can become a starting point for longer-term community action.

The communities also highlighted the need for appropriate equipment, technical training, communication tools, and resources to strengthen local fire management capacities.

We look forward to following this project's next steps.

28/07/2026

As part of the FIREPOL project, this past Monday July 27 our Post Doctoral Researcher Luisa Escobar presented a seminar at our partner's institution, the Okavango Research Institute (University of Botswana) in Maun. She introduced the FIREPOL project and shared findings from our previous research in Angola on the relationships between war and fire.
She also presented her current research, which explores how fire use provides a lens for understanding the territorial dynamics in the Okavango, highlighting the interactions between local livelihoods, conservation, and governance.
The seminar was a valuable opportunity to exchange ideas with researchers and students, receive insightful feedback, and discuss the social, political, and ecological dimensions of fire and natural resource management in the region.

22/07/2026

On Tuesday, July 7, the FIREPOL team had the pleasure of contributing to the TOAfrica Summer School School with a lecture delivered by our Principal Investigator Lorenza Belinda Fontana and our Postdoctoral Researcher Luisa Escobar.

Entitled "When War Preserves Ecosystems: Conflict and Fire Regimes in Angola", the lecture explored how the Angolan civil war reshaped access to land, fire regimes, and natural resource use in former UNITA-controlled areas. The session examined the paradox of “accidental conservation”, showing how conflict simultaneously limited ecological exploitation and disrupted beneficial disturbance practices, producing both landscape integrity and long-term social marginalization. It explored, through the lens of fire regimes, how war can have unexpected impacts on livelihoods and landscapes.

A heartfelt thank you to the TOAfrica Summer School for the invitation and to all the participants for the engaging discussion.

22/07/2026

We recently attended the POLLEN (Political Ecology Network) Conference, where we presented our research as the FIREPOL team.

Our Post Doctoral Researcher Luisa Escobar presented her current research, which explores how fire use can serve as a lens for understanding the territorial dynamics of concession systems in the Okavango.

Our Post Doctoral Researcher Alessandro Tinti’s presentation shed light on the underlying dynamics of Northern Thailand's seasonal haze crisis. It showed how satellite-based fire governance fuels disproportionate urban resentment toward traditional highland agriculture, forcing local communities to adopt "performative compliance" by timing controlled burns around satellite pass schedules to safeguard their ancestral forest stewardship.

Our PhD Candidate Greta Mazzocchi’s presentation explored wildfire through the lens of feminist political ecology, drawing on research with ecofeminist brigades in Brazil to rethink fire, care, and earthothers relations.

The conference was a valuable opportunity to showcase our work, strengthen FIREPOL's presence in current fire research, and connect with researchers and students working on fire-related issues in different parts of the world. It also provided a rich space to exchange ideas on the relationships between politics, territory, land, natural resources, and fire, and to learn from different perspectives on environmental and social challenges.

21/07/2026

We are pleased to share that our Principal Investigator Lorenza Belinda Fontana is co-author of a new publication exploring wildfire governance through a process-oriented perspective.

This perspective examines the wildfire challenge through the lens of governance, focusing on how different actors and institutions make decisions about wildfire management. The authors argue that evaluating governance only through its outcomes - such as policies, targets, or response measures - is not enough. Instead, they highlight the importance of governance processes: the ongoing interactions and collaboration between people, institutions, and landscapes that shape how wildfires are managed over time. To support future research, they propose four different wildfire governance configurations and illustrate them with examples from Brazil, the United States, Northern Australia, Spain, and Canada, showing that effective wildfire governance depends not only on achieving specific goals but also on fostering long-term cooperation and adaptation.

More info at the following link: https://www.firepol.eu/new-publication-a-typology-of-wildfire-governance-configurations-relating-outcomes-and-processes/

02/07/2026

On June 30, the FIREPOL team had the pleasure of being invited by the GRICS (Interaction and Social Change Research Group) at the University of Barcelona to present our work as part of one of their seminar sessions.

During the seminar, our Principal Investigator Lorenza Belinda Fontana, our Post Doctoral Researcher Luisa Escobar, and our PhD candidate Greta Mazzocchi introduced the FIREPOL project, with a particular focus on our fieldwork and the participatory methods we are using to explore fire governance, local knowledge, and community engagement in wildfire management.

GRICS, based within the Social Psychology Section of the University of Barcelona, investigates how social interactions and environments shape processes of social change. Their research spans socio-spatial dynamics, collective action, and the relationships between identity, power, and social transformation, making it an inspiring context in which to discuss the interdisciplinary dimensions of FIREPOL.

A sincere thank you to the GRICS team for the kind invitation and for the engaging discussion that followed our presentation. Exchanges like these are invaluable opportunities to share expertise, receive constructive feedback, and build connections across disciplines and institutions. We look forward to future opportunities to continue this dialogue and collaborate together.

02/07/2026

From 23 to 26 June, our PhD candidate Greta Mazzocchi participated in the Environmental and Climate Mobilities Network (ECMN) Conference, Mobilities and Climate Change: Bridging Transdisciplinary, Spatiotemporal and Political Divides, held at Wageningen University.

During the conference, Greta presented her ongoing research on fire (im)mobilities, drawing on preliminary findings from her fieldwork in Campinas, Brazil.

Through the concept of fire (im)mobilities, her research explores a topic that remains largely underexamined in the literature: the relationships between wildfires and human and non-human (Earth Others) mobilities and immobilities. Her work shows how wildfires are connected to processes of real estate speculation that contribute to increasing human inhabitation along the city’s urban frontier, while simultaneously reducing forest fragments and ecological corridors, limiting the mobility of Earth Others and contributing to the replacement of native plant species.

Indirizzo

Politecnico Di Torino
Turin
10125

Sito Web

http://www.firepol.eu/, https://linktr.ee/firepol.eu

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