During this 10-day Study Abroad program, a group of freshman students from the University of Pittsburgh explored Sicily and the Mediterranean through the lens of migration and human rights, touching upon big questions around identity, belonging, cultural difference, prejudice, and social justice.
Rather than approaching these complex and often sensitive themes only through discussion and theory, the course invited students to explore different ways of understanding, experiencing, and processing them. The aim was to create spaces for listening, reflection, and connection, while encouraging students to encounter different perspectives and question their own ways of seeing.
This approach shaped the whole experience. Students encountered different perspectives through visits and conversations with local organisations working across research, reception, social support, and inclusion. At the Siracusa Institute of Criminology and Social Justice, Prof. Iole Fontana invited them to look at migration from both European and US perspectives, while encounters with CIAO and L’Arcolaio offered a closer look at different forms of support, inclusion, and social engagement within the local community.
As part of their visit to L’Arcolaio, students had the opportunity to experience Frutti degli Iblei, the cooperative’s social agriculture project in the Hyblean Mountains. Here, they encountered a different and more hands-on dimension of social inclusion, experiencing first-hand the importance of working in close contact with the land and with the natural environment. The project combines the cultivation and processing of Mediterranean aromatic plants with pathways of social and employment inclusion for people experiencing vulnerability, including former prisoners and young migrants.
The visit allowed students to see how work, agriculture and care for the territory can become tools for creating opportunities and rebuilding connections with the community. Rather than discussing inclusion only as an abstract concept, they were able to encounter a concrete model in which social integration, employment, environmental sustainability and the valorisation of local biodiversity are interconnected.
The course also explored more embodied ways of learning and reflecting. Through journaling, students had space to process their own emotions and experiences. An interactive walk through Syracuse with cultural mediator Ramzi Harrabi invited them to read the city through its different cultural and historical layers, exploring its Islamic heritage and the traces of intercultural exchange that continue to shape it today.
Students also had the chance to embody social dynamics that can be difficult to express through words alone, thanks to the work of Maria Giovanna Italia from Officina SocialMeccanica, who introduced practices rooted in the pedagogy of Theatre of the Oppressed. Through Image Theatre, students used their bodies and collective movement to make relationships, emotions, and social dynamics visible, experiencing how a change in position can also change the way a situation is perceived.
And, just as importantly, there was space for community. An intercultural cooking workshop and shared dinner brought students and members of the local community together around the same table, creating an opportunity for conversation, exchange, and celebration.
The experience came together in a collective publication gathering pages from the students’ personal journals, bringing together their thoughts, impressions, emotions, and fragments of their whole experience.
A shared collection of voices, capturing the experience from their own perspectives.
