Participatory Action-Research facing the Contemporary Conjuncture. Lessons from Eastern Sicily

This article contributes to the long-standing debate on how universities can meaningfully engage with distressed communities to improve their quality of life. It draws on the author’s twenty years of work in Eastern Sicily, Italy, through the lens of the well- established form of engaged scholarship called Participatory Action Research (PAR). The article seeks to clarify misunderstandings around PAR in the Italian context in the face of the growing enthusiasm for the so-called university’s ‘third mission.’ It purpose is to identify and discuss some of the key challenges and obstacles PAR faces in the current conjuncture, while offering insights on how to address them in order to fulfil its original mission: counteracting significant and long-standing socio-economic and spatial inequalities.