Methodological opportunities and challenges for socio-educational research with communities at risk of invisibility

This Winter School - January 26-30, 2026 -  critically examines digital methods for researching communities and issues at risk of invisibility, with examples including (but not limited to) migrant experiences, LGBTQIA+ identities, underrepresented forms of knowledge, disability rights, gender-based violence, and political activism. It frames media ecologies as dynamic spaces of informal learning where identities are negotiated, knowledge is produced, and cultural practices may reinforce or challenge dominant narratives.

The school emphasizes the need to problematize how digital methods are used, looking beyond their technical application to their epistemological, methodological, ethical, and political dimensions. By drawing on perspectives from media ecology, critical pedagogy, and feminist epistemologies, participants will explore how digital environments both constrain and enable visibility, voice, and agency.

Through a combination of seminars, workshops, and collaborative discussions, the program fosters reflection on the role of digital media in processes of inclusion and exclusion, and offers hands-on engagement with qualitative approaches—from exploratory observation to dataset construction and analysis.

Designed for Master’s degree holder, PhD students as well as early-career researchers, the Winter School provides conceptual grounding and practical tools to carry out socio-educational research attentive to issues of marginalization, visibility, and epistemic justice.

The International Summer School took place from 1 to 5 September 2025 in the splendid setting of Villa del Grumello, Como.

The international Summer School is organized by the Lake Como School for Advanced Studies and coordinated by the scholars of the WP5/Spoke 10 group within the national project Age-IT. Ageing well in an ageing society (PNRR): Prof. Laura Formenti (University of Milano-Bicocca), Prof. Amelia Compagni (Bocconi University), Prof. Cristina Mele (University of Naples Federico II), and Prof. Tiziana Nazio (University of Turin/University of Eastern Piedmont), in collaboration with: CAPTED – Departmental Research Centre for Changes and Educational Potentials in the Digital Transition, University of Milano-Bicocca; the LEAA Board (Learning & Education for Active Ageing, Age-IT); ESREA; RUIAP; and the doctoral programme Education in the Contemporary Society at the University of Milano-Bicocca.

The School addresses the theme of transitions, adopting the theoretical and epistemological framework of complexity and the perspective of “doing transitions” as an overarching lens for interdisciplinary research on ageing. Participants will be actively engaged through keynote lectures and discussions, methodological workshops, doctoral and early-career research presentations, personalized supervision sessions, and collaborative writing groups, under the guidance of four distinguished keynote speakers and a wide range of international experts from diverse research fields—including adult education, life-course sociology, (co-)design of services, technological (co-)design, critical and social gerontology, and more. Research will be presented and discussed drawing on qualitative, quantitative, dialogical, participatory, and critical approaches, with the aim of developing complex interpretations of longevity and of the challenges it poses for education, care, social networks, services, and territorial transformations.
Today interdisciplinarity has become indispensable in research, as complex problems require the convergence of multiple perspectives to open up non-linear pathways of understanding and intervention—pathways that remain open to possibilities while respecting the rights, needs, and aspirations of the people involved. Yet, this path is demanding: it requires rigorous methodological grounding as well as an awareness of potential obstacles and solutions.

The School’s objective is to offer an immersive, dialogical, and intensive experience for doctoral candidates, early-career researchers, postdoctoral fellows, and senior scholars alike, fostering the development of new ideas, nurturing interdisciplinary dialogue, and encouraging collaboration on future projects. Proposals are especially welcome on lifelong learning in later life, intergenerationality, transformations in contemporary life-course trajectories, the co-design and generative evaluation of services, technological tools, and media, as well as measures to promote service accessibility, active ageing, and locally and nationally sensitive policies.

The Summer School, organised as part of the Critical Theory of Society programme – under the academic supervision of Vittorio Morfino and Stefano Pippa – took place between 4 and 7 September 2024.

The spectre of digital capitalism is haunting the world.
The so-called “AI boom” of the past few years has now taken centre stage in the public debate, scientific research, and in the political agendas of international institutions.
As the Global North seems to have embarked on a relentless journey towards the digital restructuring of our societies, the digital transition has given rise to new problems regarding the societal and political implications of new technologies.

Is a new form of digital capitalism emerging from the interplay of digital technology and pre-existing social relations? What is the direct impact of digital technology on human labour? How does this affect our life as a whole? And how is it revolutionising the public sphere?
More urgently, what is the role of emancipatory politics in this scenario?
These are some of the questions that tech enthusiasts and technophobes alike are ill-prepared to address.

The third edition of the Lake Como Summer School in Critical Theory of Society will gather scholars of renowned reputation to discuss these issues from different perspectives.

From 29 to 31 May 2024, the “Emotional Ergonomics of Immersive Virtual Environments (EEIVE)” summer school took place, under the scientific direction of Alessandro Pepe and Eleonora Farina.

The Summer School on Emotional Ergonomic of Immersive Virtual Environment (EEIVE) will offer an interdisciplinary training program for PhD students and early-career professionals, with the goal of enhancing knowledge on themes related to emotional ergonomics of immersive virtual environments. Since its inception, ergonomics has helped make technological advancement and innovation more accessible to humankind. Recent years have seen a real paradigm shift in the field of cognitive ergonomics, which studies the interaction between the human cognitive system and information processing tools.

As technology develops, the creation of virtual and immersive environments presents fresh difficulties for anybody wishing to research human-machine interaction in these settings. The new paradigm shift relates to the study of how the human emotional system interacts with virtual spaces, which is known as emotional ergonomics of virtual environments. In other words, ergonomics as a design for the body has given way to cognitive ergonomics, a design for thinking, and then to emotional ergonomics, a design for people's inner states.

The Summer School on Emotional Ergonomic of Immersive Virtual Environment (EEIVE) aims at deepening theoretical and methodological domains linked to human-computer interaction with a specific focus on using multisensory approaches for researching the human experience. It will include lectures and group-work sessions led by scholars of national and international standing.