CO>SEA

Collaboratorium for the Socio-Environmental Analysis of the Ocean

[head photo G.Lupinacci]

[logo Allegra Guerrazzi]

CO>SEA is a research team based at the Sapienza University of Rome, led by social geographers at the Department MEMOTEF (Italy) in collaboration with documentarists and photographers of Raw-News Visual Production Agency (UK), and its creation has been supported by the  European Commission Prize for Citizen Science 2024 and endorsed by the U.N. Ocean Decade Activity 2025. Through stable collaborations in action-research projects, the team has in time advanced highly transdisciplinary work with social scientists (such as urbanists, sociologists, ethnographers, political scientists, management scholars) and natural scientists (notably oceanographers, biologists, chemists) and computer scientists. The team is highly trans-sectoral and has activated solid collaborations with institutions and SMEs (notably professionals in marine, social and cultural areas, as well as production sectors), as well as with NGOs and civic associations. We cross-fertilise and exchange with international network of scholars, activist and insitutions, including UN Ocean Decade, Marine Social Science Network, U.N. Decade Collaborative Centre for Coastal Resilience, friends and colleagues from SAP&O Science+Art+Participation in&about the Ocean and the Sailing4Research groups, European Marine Board, and the EU Mission Ocean.

COSEA press releaseDownload
COSEA Comunicato StampaDownload

Approach and methods

The team promotes intersectoral and international collaboration by integrating three complementary approaches to marine research: Marine Social Geography, Oceanography, and Visual Documentation. Its work investigates socio-ecological transformations affecting the global ocean and their local manifestations, with particular attention to the relationships between human and non-human societies and marine environments. CO>SEA advances sustainable marine governance grounded in the needs of local communities. Through citizen science, participatory action research, and visual documentation, it fosters a culture of respect for the ocean as a shared common good. Within its framework, the sea is understood both as a physical and conceptual space for rethinking human relationships within complex and evolving ecological systems.

The methodological approach is inspired by the “Collaboratorium” model promoted by the Ghent University as a hybrid practice of research and creative collaboration where actors from different sectors “think together about problem definitions and possible solutions, future visions and strategies, (living lab experiments and upscaling initiatives, etc.), and seek to translate these issues into concrete assignments for master thesis work, group writing assessments, policy-oriented research, etc.“

The team develops radically participatory processes for identifying, documenting, and communicating socio-environmental challenges, while supporting collaborative exploration of potential solutions. Its methodologies combine ethnographic research, cultural geography, visual methods, and oceanographic approaches, with a strong emphasis on participatory citizen science—where knowledge is co-produced by researchers and non-professionals. This enhances public engagement with marine environments that are often physically and cognitively inaccessible, mobilises local and tacit knowledge, addresses place-based concerns identified by stakeholders, and contributes to both international research networks and locally grounded processes of transformation. This approach has been feeded by cross-collaboration and exchanges in the SAP&O – Science+Art+Participation in&about the Ocean.

The SailingLab, a soft research-infrastructure

CO>SEA explores how sailing can serve as a tool, an object, or a context for scientific research. While going out to sea—whether by sail or motorboat—is essential for oceanography, marine biology, and many other natural-science disciplines, sailing also opens up radically different approaches to social and cultural research. Being at sea offers new perspectives on reality, shapes our understanding of major environmental challenges, and affects the ways we make sense of the world. Moreover, sailing for research can contribute to decarbonising access to the ocean, bringing people closer to marine environments and reclaiming sailing as an ancient, affordable, and sustainable way of moving and engaging directly with the most pervasive environment on Earth. This also helps to challenge the perception of sailing as an exclusive, high-cost, elite activity, restoring its potential as a shared and accessible practice. This perspective has been developed in dialogue with colleagues from Sailing4Research and tested in the CoSea_Lab project SailingLab test.

The longest and most widespread expedition of the CO>SEA team was supported by the EU Mission Ocean project PartArt4OW and saw a one-month long navigation and exploration activities in the West Med in july 2026, with overly 14 sites of exploration, off sea reportages, in port events and scientific products (all available here), hosting dialogues, exhibitions, and events with European citizens, and highlighting the role of arts, social sciences, humanities, and arts in marine research and sustainable transformation. The sailing and exploration diary is available here, including links to all visual products.

CO>SEA Projects Portfolio

[photo Giuseppe Lupinacci]

Events organised

Scientific publications, reports and datasets

[photo Giuseppe Lupinacci]

Visual Products

[photo Giuseppe Lupinacci]

Interviews, maps, podcasts

Available equipment for sharing

Team

CO>SEA activities have been realised in collaboration with a flexible, transdisciplinary, cross-sectorial network of researchers and professionals.

  • Chiara Certomà is CO>SEA coordinator, she is an assistant professor of socio-political geography at Sapienza University of Rome MEMOTEF Dep., with over fifteen years of research experience in participatory methods for science and policymaking. Engaged in 15 national and international research projects, she is an expert in environmental governance and social innovation for sustainability, adopts participatory citizen science and mobilises volunteers in data collection, elaboration and sharing on the biological consequences of marine plastic pollution. Chiara is actively committed to Marine Social Science, visual geography and ocean studies. She has authored more than 30 papers and books and led the EU project “SeaPacs” (awarded the EU Citizen Science Prize 2024 – Diversity and Collaboration), “SeaPaCS”, “FishArt”, “Tentacular Thinking”, and “PartArt4OW”.
  • Luisa Galgani is a researcher at the University of Siena (Italy, part-time) and a freelance consultant in aquatic pollution. With a background in biological oceanography and aquatic biogeochemistry, her research focuses on anthropogenic impacts on marine and freshwater ecosystems, particularly carbon cycling and air–sea interactions with potential climatic effects. Since 2022, she has collaborated with the European Commission Mission “Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030” as an external expert and serves as an evaluator for MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships and Horizon Europe proposals. She is the recipient of two MSCA Fellowships and has contributed to several EU-funded projects. After a PhD from the University of Kiel (Germany), she has integrated citizen science into her work, training volunteers in aquatic pollutant monitoring since 2016. She co-chairs the SCOR Working Group SPASS, is SOLAS National Contact Point for Italy, a member of the ASLO Education and Engagement Committee, and Associate Editor of npj Emerging Contaminants.
  • Federico Fornaro is managing director of the independent news agency Raw-News Visual Production Agency (UK), with 18year + of experience in documentaries and hard news in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Expert in video documentation and photography, including underwater and drone-based. Jointly with UniTo, he produced the video documentation in “SeaPaCS”, “FishArt”, “Tentacular Thinking”, PartArt4OW”. He is an Italian stable correspondent for Al Jazeera and NBC News; and a recurrent correspondent for CBS, Euronews, Sky, CCTV, France24, BBC. Contracted with Greenpeace, Unicef, Unesco, National Geographic, DataLine, Colonial Pictures, Reuters, Italian Minister for Foreign Affars, Lebanon Minister of Turism and Avaaz. He is a skipper and sailing instructor. Over 20 years of experience in oceanic sailing, Esprit Marin Prize 2013 for the Atlantic solo crossing during MiniTransat. federico.fornaro@raw-news.net
  • Caterina Pozzobon is research assistant at Sapienza University of Rome, MEMOTEF Dep., working on the management of the EU Horizon project “Participatory Art for society engagement with Ocean and Water (PartArt4OW)”. After obtaining a Masters degree in Cooperation, Development, and Innovation in the Global Economy from the University of Turin, she earned a PhD in Urban and Regional Development from the Polytechnic of Turin, with a thesis in human geography on water resource management in rural central Tanzania, adopting a feminist political ecology approach. Her main research interests include participatory research, the use of visual methods, and the analysis of the human and more-than -human geographies of water. caterina.pozzobon@uniroma1.it . Collaborator in “CoSea_Lab. Laboratorio Collaborativo per il mare e la sostenibilità nel Golfo di Anzio” (Bando Terza Missione 2024 Sapienza University of Rome).
  • Giuseppe Lupinacci is a water photographer. He embarked as a sailor and then as a skipper, from 1999 to 2010, in the Maldives, Turkey, Egypt, Antigua, Barbados, Martinique, Sint Maarten, Saint Lucia, Tenerife and sailing the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. Since 2013 he has been working as a freelance aquatic and underwater photographer for media agencies, press, sports institutions and international projects. Collaborating with international projects “SeaPaCS”, “FishArt”, “Tentacular Thinking”, PartArt4OW” to explore the transformation of oceanic ecosystems and the relationship between society and the ocean, and his photography solo exhibitions have been presented in Milan, Rome, Palma de Mallorca and London. Collaborator in “CO>SEA Collaboratorium for the Socio-Environmental Analysis of the Ocean” and “CoSea_Lab. Laboratorio Collaborativo per il mare e la sostenibilità nel Golfo di Anzio” (Bando Terza Missione 2024 Sapienza University of Rome).
  • Giorgio Garofani, PhD student at Sapienza University of Rome – MEMOTEF Dep., collaborating in the BLUE_HN project.

Who has collaborated with us

  • Luca Bertocci has been a research assistant at Sapienza University of Rome, MEMOTEF Dep., working on the management of the EU Horizon project “Participatory Art for society engagement with Ocean and Water (PartArt4OW)”. After obtaining a bachelor’s in Literature and Philosophy and a Master’s degree in Geography from the University of Bologna, he earned a PhD in Urban and Regional Development from the Polytechnic of Turin, with a thesis in urban philosophy and politics focused on planetary urbanisation and the ongoing epochal transformation of planetary water due to climate change. His main research interests include political theory, philosophy and geographical thinking. They are conceived as crucial techniques for unveiling emancipatory potentials embedded in our metamorphic and always negotiated world. luca.bertocci@uniroma1.it Collaborator in “CoSea_Lab. Laboratorio Collaborativo per il mare e la sostenibilità nel Golfo di Anzio” (Bando Terza Missione 2024 Sapienza University of Rome).
  • Chiara Salari has been a research assistant at Sapienza University of Rome, MEMOTEF Dep. on the management of the EU Horizon project “Participatory Art for society engagement with Ocean and Water (PartArt4OW)”. After obtaining a PhD in visual studies (University Paris Cité and Roma TRE University), she was an international fellow at the KWI (Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities of Essen, Germany) and a research fellow at the Department of Sociology and Social Research of the University of Milano-Bicocca. Her main research interests include the environmental aesthetics of post-industrial landscapes, ecocritical approaches to the study of images, the representation of biodiversity and marine landscapes in multimedia online archives and atlases. Collaborator in “Marine Social Research” (Bando Workshop 2024 Sapienza University of Rome).
  • Tommaso Valente is a researcher at ISPRA/Sapienza University, Environmental Biology Dep., with a focus on marine ecology, Marine Pollution, Bioindicators, Feeding Ecology, Environmental Pollution, Marine Debris, and Marine Ecosystems. He has been a collaborator in ” CoSea_Lab. Laboratorio Collaborativo per il mare e la sostenibilità nel Golfo di Anzio” (Bando Terza Missione 2024 Sapienza University of Rome).
  • Amedeo Boldrini is a postdoc at the University of Siena – Department of Biotechnology, Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, an expert in water contamination. He has been a collaborator in ” CoSea_Lab. Laboratorio Collaborativo per il mare e la sostenibilità nel Golfo di Anzio” (Bando Terza Missione 2024 Sapienza University of Rome).
  • Massimo Battaglia Associate professor in Economy and Management, Sapienza University of Rome -Management Dep., collaborator in ” CoSea_Lab. Laboratorio Collaborativo per il mare e la sostenibilità nel Golfo di Anzio” (Bando Terza Missione 2024 Sapienza University of Rome).
  • Roberta Gemmiti full professor in Economic Geography, Sapienza University of Rome – MEMOTEF Dep., collaborator in “CoSea_Lab. Laboratorio Collaborativo per il mare e la sostenibilità nel Golfo di Anzio” (Bando Terza Missione 2024 Sapienza University of Rome). Project coordinator of the research “Ambiente, diseguaglianze e giustizia in Italia”

COSEA team presentation 1Download

CO>SEA in international repositories/databases

CO>SEA Activities Diary

  • 20 June 2026 Caterina Pozzobon, Chiara Certomà and Giorgio Garfani give a lecture in the Master “Sviluppo Locale Community-Led”, Sapienza University of Rome and University Ca’Foscari.
  • 7 jul 2026 CoSea_Lab presented at the Terza Missione Event at Sapienza University of Rome
Poster Co>SeaDownload
  • 16 Sep 2026 Chiara Certoma’ presented “A Sea of Stories. PartArt4OW Sailing Lab logbook from the turbolent Mediterranean”, Giorgio Garofani presented “European Harbours between Blue Economy exploitation and grassroot political resistance of Blue Society” and Caterina Pozzobon presented the poster “CoSea_Lab. A Collaboratorium for the Socio-Environmental Analysis of the Ocean” t the XVI Giornata della Ricerca MEMOTEF, Istituto Nazionale degli Studi Romani, Rome
programma-XVI-Giornata-RIcerca-v4Download
741697 (2)Download
741685Download

News

Follow CO>SEA on

Fb https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61580257533796; https://www.facebook.com/chiara.certoma.7/

IG https://www.instagram.com/co_sea_/; https://www.instagram.com/certoma.chiara/

Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@chiaracertoma5466

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑