I have a PhD in Environmental Geography, and I have been teaching geographical disciplines since 2001 at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Catania, formerly the Faculty of Political Sciences. I am currently full professor of Economic and Political Geography and deputy director of the Department. My research interests concern the themes of urban and regional development with particular attention to the issues of de-industrialization and industrial reconversion. From 2007 to 2013, I took part in a research project funded by the British Academy on the de-industrialization and financialisation of space in the Pirelli-Bicocca area of Milan. My work has highlighted the often neglected role of local micro and macro actors in the processes of financialisation of urban space, also looking at the effects that these processes generate in the local communities of inhabitants. More recently, I have focused on the Syracuse petrochemical pole and the coastal strip south of Syracuse, trying to understand how transcalar dimensions and interests contribute to defining the processes of de-industrialization and economic reconversion currently underway in the territory.